Ciro Pessoa Mendes Corrêa (12 June 1957 – 5 May 2020), also known by his Dharma name Tenzin Chöpel, was a Brazilian singer-songwriter, lyricist, guitarist, screenwriter, journalist and poet, famous for being one of the founding members of the influential rock band Titãs and for his later work with pioneering post-punk/gothic rock band Cabine C. He also formed numerous other short-lived and lesser known projects throughout the early to mid-1990s before beginning a solo career in 2003.

As a teenager, he studied at the Colégio Equipe, where he would meet Arnaldo Antunes, Paulo Miklos, Nando Reis, Marcelo Fromer, Branco Mello, Tony Bellotto and Sérgio Britto.

[2] Pessoa never recorded anything with Titãs during his stay with them, but co-wrote some of the band's most famous hits, such as "Sonífera Ilha", "Toda Cor", "Homem Primata" and "Babi Índio", among others.

[3] Shortly afterwards, Pessoa formed two concomitant new bands: Os Jetsons, with Branco Mello and Charles Gavin, and Ricotas do Harlem, a soul duo with Fernando Salem.

Contrasting with the dark, gothic sound Cabine C had developed, CPSP moved towards a brighter and more pop rock-inflected direction which was, according to Pessoa, influenced by Jovem Guarda singers such as Odair José, Roberto Carlos and Jerry Adriani.

[12] In 2001, Pessoa and Branco Mello wrote the music and lyrics for a children's concept album, Eu e Meu Guarda-Chuva, about a boy named Eugênio and his trustworthy umbrella.

A heavily psychedelic and experimental album, it was intended by Pessoa to evoke the 1960s and 1970s bands he grew up listening to, most notably The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Os Mutantes, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Secos & Molhados, and the œuvre of Surrealist painters and poets such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and André Breton.

[17] His debut book, Relatos da Existência Caótica, came out on October 23, 2015, by Chiado Editora; it is a compilation of five poetry anthologies Pessoa wrote during his early career, but until then remained unpublished: O Labirinto do Sr. Eno, Ecos de um Encantamento Distante, Manual das Mãos, Patagônia Mentalis and Os Emblemas.

[18][19][20] From 2010 until it was put on hold in 2016, Pessoa toured around Brazil with his live band Nu Descendo a Escada (named after Marcel Duchamp's 1912 painting "Nude Descending a Staircase").

Pessoa became a Vajrayana Buddhist in the late 1990s, thus obtaining the Dharma name Tenzin Chöpel, which he used to sign most of the articles he wrote for the magazines and newspapers for which he worked for.