Aníbal Zola is the pseudonym for José Aníbal Beirão, a Portuguese bassist and singer/songwriter. Born in Porto in 1983, started at an early age learning piano and guitar. At the age of 16, his older brother offered him an electric bass on which he started playing alone as an autodidact and few years later with a local rock band. At the age of 19 he started studying electric bass at “Escola de Jazz do Porto” changing some years later to double bass, following an academic path at “Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo (ESMAE)” where he studied with some of the most important musicians of the Porto Jazz scene.

At the same time, he also developed a personality as a songwriter mostly influenced by Portuguese popular music and Latin American Music but also by Tom Waits and some American Songbook composers, such as Cole Porter or Duke Ellington. He has released three albums “Baiumbadaiumbé” (2018, self released), “Amortempo” (2020, self released but with the support of Fundação GDA, artists´ rights management) and “Quem sai aos seus” (2022, self released with the support of SPA and DGartes).

You can see Aníbal Zola performing solo shows using a loop-station to build-up his double bass / voice performance; trio shows with percussions and other string instruments such us guitar, ukulele and mandolin; and sextet shows adding an extra percussionist and two winds, clarinet and trombone.