Mauro Martins de Oliveira is the creator and producer of the music and music-video project Love To Bleed.
The name itself reflects a lifelong commitment to putting love first and wearing the heart on the sleeve, not just in personal relationships, but also with Mauro’s lifelong commitment to activism and being a father of four. Love To Bleed’s diverse lyrics reflect a vulnerable and exposed human engaging and navigating the broad and complex topics of the awakening global citizen, risking and suffering the consequences.
Mauro was born in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and moved to the United States at age three. Later in life, he would return to his Native land while attempting to reconnect with his cardiologist father and the culture he left behind.
As a child, Mauro was classically trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with the same professors his concert pianist mother was studying with. Although his first band in the fifth grade, called The Stingrays, was where he first composed rock music, it was in the seventh grade he began to experience spontaneous composition while sitting at the piano. He had taken the techniques and versatility ingrained through classical training and then began to compose music in many genres. Some of that went into performing in Northeast Ohio with several bands Mauro formed throughout his teenage years.
With fellow band-mates, Mauro began learning music production, and one recording studio after the other was created. One in particular, The Underground, was a hotbed for the northeast Ohio music scene where he teamed up with drummer Tim Houseman to produce and record the area’s talent. Interestingly, years later Tim and Mauro would work together in Love To Bleed with Tim Recording tracks remotely from his Georgia drum studio.
Mauro went on to further his music production skills at Kent State University and then Lakeland College, also in Ohio. When 20 years of age, while attending Lakeland, he composed for classical piano, string ensembles, marching band, and theatre and he danced in the school’s modern dance company. Outside of school he was writing, recording, and performing rock and roll. Also while at Lakeland College, the humanities director asked Mauro to apply his production knowledge to the creation of the school’s first music production course. He was also teaching master classes for his mother’s gifted piano students where he taught them improvisation and useful music theory.
When he finished school, Mauro headed west and based out of Los Angeles where he produced several albums for himself as well as other bands in his own “Studio Lightfield”. While there he was approached by the incoming presidential inauguration committee for Bill Clinton. He composed and recorded the opening ceremony for Clinton’s Inaugural, called the Bells Of Hope. Similarly, he was approached by producers working with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations that was taking place in San Francisco. Mauro penned and co-produced the song “21st Century Child” for the children’s choir performing at the event.
During those years Mauro learned of his Native roots and became involved in Native American social justice issues, began attending local sweat lodges and soon found himself sun dancing with Martin High Bear. Inspired by ceremony, Mauro formed the non-profit organization SOL Communications (Signal of Love) which he runs to this day. SOL began the largest and most successful supply line to the resisting Elders in the Navajo nation, known as the Big Mountain resistance. Today, SOL continues work at Big Mountain and all over the Navajo and Hopi nations by supplying winter firewood, potable water, food, and other vital supplies to Elders in the region.
SOL also rescues raptors like eagles, hawks, falcons and owls in the northern California region and regularly takes the state of California and local timber companies to court over forest clear-cutting in the region. Other Native-led projects of SOL are the Medicine Lake Defense project and the restoration and teaching of the Achomawi language which was most certainly headed for extinction.
Today Mauro is proficient in music video production, editing, and other multi-media skills. He routinely composes and records for his Love To Bleed project, working with Northern California musicians mainly. Mauro has a Spiritual foundation based around music and he considers composing and recording as therapy, companionship, and a never-ending flow of consciousness and knowledge. He continues to write symphony and classical pieces from “a need” and also for his granddaughter (like lullabies etc.). He has composed and recorded over a thousand piano pieces and many diverse compositions influenced by music from all over the world.
His newest release from Love To Bleed, “Last Of My Kind”, certainly reflects that.
“WOW, epic! Very Spirited. The vocals sound like Bowie, really good!”
-Fritz Heede
Film / Cinema Composer