Ana Moura

Friday, March 29, 2013 | 8:00 pm

Carolina Theatre of Durham

Fado music resembles American blues in its soulful candor, wringing shades of bittersweet longing from the voice and the 12-string Portuguese guitar. Formerly deemed déclassé, like bachata and tango before it, fado is now a worldwide sensation, thanks in no small part to the young luminary Ana Moura.

Moura grew up singing in the fado houses of Lisbon before stepping up, armed with a flexible reverence for tradition, to the world stage. With her gorgeously smoky voice and commanding personal magnetism, she “[makes] each song a series of small dramatic surges” (NY Times), sparkling with “glimmers of hope, hints of sensuality, passages of melancholy, glints of determination.” With an acoustic bassist and six-string guitarist augmenting the traditional guitarra Portuguesa, Moura’s music will sound ultimately rich in the Carolina Theatre, an unusually compact venue for a star of her magnitude.