Founder of Thiago de Mello & Amazon, Thiago de Mello infused his compositions with Amazonian elements drawn from his Brazilian roots, employing self-crafted instruments such as the boca do mato, boca-de-barro and pau de chuva assembled from wood scraps and other natural materials. Recordings of his pieces have appeared on releases by Paul Winter, Sharon Isbin, Paquito d'Rivera, Cláudio Roditi, Carlos Barbosa Lima, Tibério Nascimento and Richard Kimball. He contributed to two Grammy-nominated projects, Susannah McCorkle’s Hearts & Minds and, as composer, Sharon Isbin’s Dreams of a World.
The brother of poet Thiago de Mello—both artists known solely by surname—relocated to New York NY in 1966 amid Brazil’s political unrest and first appeared locally as a bossa nova performer in city clubs. He established the Guitar Society of the United Nations in 1970 and guided it for the following decade. The 1973 album Amazon featured Dom Salvador on piano, Airto Moreira on percussion, Cláudio Roditti on trumpet, Paulo Moura on winds and Don Payne on bass. In 1985 he joined the Guitar Stream concert at Carnegie Hall in New York NY. He appeared as Paul Winter’s guest throughout 1986 and 1987, then joined Carlos Barbosa Lima as special guest at the 1988 Carnegie Recital Hall performance marking Barbosa Lima’s thirtieth year as a professional instrumentalist. Three years afterward he again performed with Barbosa Lima at St. John’s Smith Square in London, England, plus venues in Berkeley and Monterey, California. A 1992 return to St. John’s Smith Square united him with Barbosa Lima, Laurindo de Almeida and the Wren Orchestra of London.
At the 1992 Rio Eco world ecological summit in Rio de Janeiro he shared the stage with Paul Winter and Oscar Castro-Neves. Collaborating with Sharon Isbin on guitar and Paul Winter on saxophones, he recorded Journey to the Amazon, which contained six of his compositions plus his arrangements; the album reached the top of Tower Records’ world music chart and was named Downbeat’s best reissue of 1999. His debut LP Amazon, whose master tapes had been lost to arson, was restored and reissued across Europe and Brazil in 1998, attaining the number-one position on Tower Records’ world chart.
Mello composed scores for theater productions including The Well of Living Waters, The Visit, Exit The King, From Marti to Pietri, Growing up Gothic, Carioca, Twelfth Night and Broadway Melody 1492, for films Who Will Help Little Paulo and A Prairie Boys Winter, and for the dance work Recurrent Insomnia’s/Managua. During 2000 he instructed at the summer program of the School of Music of Brasília and appeared at the city’s National Theater. In Rio de Janeiro he supported Ithamara Koorax during her Bossa Nova Meets Drum'n'bass presentation at Bar do Tom.
