A CRIAÇÃO DO MUNDO

photo: Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio Large Ensemble by Bruno Ferrari


A CRIAÇÃO DO MUNDO

Foi com 24 concertos, nos mesmos sete dias da cristã criação do mundo, que se cumpriu a 13ª edição do festival promovido pela Creative Sources. Muito aconteceu pelos lados de Belém com a participação de várias dezenas de improvisadores portugueses e uma mão-cheia de convidados de outros países – a jazz.pt faz “zoom”, neste relato, sobre duas das sessões...

Foram sete dias seguidos de festival, de 18 a 24 de Novembro, com três ou quatro concertos por sessão no O’culto da Ajuda, em Lisboa, num total de 24. Com 13 anos de vida cumpridos em 2019, o Creative Sources Fest já há muito nos tinha habituado a tamanha oferta. Uma boa parte dos participantes – os habituais no catálogo da editora conduzida por Ernesto Rodrigues – surgiram várias vezes em palco, integrados em diferentes formações, mas ainda assim houve lugar para a imprevisibilidade e a surpresa.
Os Spiegel abriram as três noites iniciais com a aplicação de um conceito assaz interessante: na segunda actuação tocaram com, e sobre, a gravação da primeira, e na terceira sobre, e com, os registos das duas anteriores, jogando com as dicotomias entre o directo e o diferido, a improvisação “in loco” e a que criativamente se pode estabelecer com a memória auditiva documentada. Carlos “Zíngaro”, um veterano da música improvisada nacional (e internacional, será de acrescentar) que só se associou à marca Creative Sources quando, o ano passado, surgiu como convidado especial do Lisbon String Trio no álbum “Theia”, esteve presente em três importantes momentos – um em que tocou com Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues, Hernâni Faustino e o recentemente regressado às lides musicais José Oliveira, outro inserido no colectivo IKB (para o qual contribuiu também essoutro nome maior da música nacional que é Pedro Carneiro) e um terceiro com o Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio Large Ensemble. Encontrá-lo na mesma formação em que esteve Maria Reis, a vocalista e guitarrista das roqueiras Pega Monstro, não era propriamente expectável.
Façamos, para este relato do que aconteceu em Belém, um “zoom” sobre dois dos dias do cartaz, os de 22 e 23. A maratona arrancou com um quarteto de ocasião em que três músicos portugueses que antes já tínhamos encontrado juntos, Luís Vicente, Rodrigo Pinheiro e Hernâni Faustino, contracenaram com o baterista belga Tom Malmendier. Mais próximo do jazz do que a maior parte dos grupos alinhados para esta edição do festival, o quarteto pegou nos motivos da linguagem free e adequou-os a uma situação que prescindiu de qualquer tipo de amplificação (contrabaixo “unplugged” e ausência de microfones), com a bateria a trocar a habitual sustentação motórica por construções texturais de especial elegância. A música resultante tornou-se acentuadamente meditativa, se bem que decorrendo ao largo de quaisquer paisagismos. Instantes houve em que parecia estarmos a ouvir o Kenny Wheeler dos anos 1970, trompetista por quem, de resto, Vicente tem particular devoção.
Os minutos introdutórios da prestação que se seguiu, de Étienne Brunet com Carlos Santos e Carla Santana, pareciam dirigir-se para terrenos bem distintos, com o saxofonista francês a associar-se com um “laptop” aos sintetizadores e demais parafernália electrónica dos seus parceiros de circunstância. Quando Brunet pegou no sax soprano voltámos a ouvir os típicos fraseados do jazz, numa abordagem tonal que contrastava assumidamente com os crepitares ruidosos (Santos) e os “drones” de base (Santana) que o envolviam. Por detrás do trio passou um vídeo com imagens invertidas do mar e do céu, emaranhados de cabos eléctricos e um Étienne Brunet a tocar para elefantes, com o músico e os animais convertidos em manchas de cor. Foi curioso e interessante quanto baste.

O melhor veio depois com o projecto String Theory, uma piscadela de olho deste agrupamento exclusivamente de cordas (que incluiu um piano, mas sem uma única vez se terem utilizado as teclas) à chamada teoria das cordas, ramo da física que procura explicar o universo substituindo a noção de que a essência deste não está nas partículas em forma de ponto da vulgata desta ciência, mas nos objectos unidimensionais a que se dá o nome de cordas, devido à condição vibracional dos ditos. Pois o concerto lidou precisamente com o factor vibração, com os intervenientes (Ernesto Rodrigues, Maria do Mar, Ulrich Mitzlaff, Miguel Mira, Ricardo Jacinto, Abdul Moimême, Pedro Bicho, Hernâni Faustino, Sofia Queiroz e Mariana Carvalho) a subverterem as lógicas seculares dos ensembles camerísticos formados por cordofones sem nunca verdadeiramente saírem desse âmbito. O eixo do decateto esteve na combinação da viola de Rodrigues e do violino de do Mar, que conduzia todos os procedimentos, com a tríade de violoncelos e a dupla de contrabaixos a ampliarem os efeitos vibracionais causados por esse núcleo como se fossem as rugas causadas por uma pedra na superfície da água de um lago. Às duas guitarras e ao interior do piano coube o acrescento dos demais contributos sonoros, sempre com o propósito de dar a perceber que pontuar é, afinal, traçar uma linha.
A noite que se seguiu arrancou com um solo da italiana de origem coreana Yu Lin Humm, todo ele feito de delicadas filigranas, numa sonoridade mista de música clássica e folk. Ainda que de agradável audição, a curta peça era muito obviamente escrita e foi interpretada sem introdução de passagens improvisadas, ou assim pareceu, pelo que surgiu algo desenquadrada no âmbito em causa. Totalmente improvisada – e a cada passo beneficiando da experiência como improvisadores dos três músicos – foi a prestação de Ernesto Rodrigues e Rodrigo Pinheiro com o norte-americano Fred Lonberg-Holm que se sucedeu a esse simpático equívoco. Inebriante, misteriosa, alternando entre uma grande intensidade e mais serenos caudais, dir-se-ia que a música deste trio em estreia absoluta vinha de percursos comuns entre todos e até de repetidos ensaios, mas assim não se verificava. Nada tinha sido previamente estabelecido, e apesar disso aconteceu aquela imediata empatia musical que só a prática da improvisação permite, mas que raras vezes se proporciona.
Tocou depois o Trio PAN(a)Sónico de Maria do Mar com os espanhóis Juan Cato Calvi e Luis Erades, este sim, um grupo que tem tido um trabalho continuado no tempo. A violinista, o clarinetista e o saxofonista levaram para o O’culto uma partitura, com a performance a variar entre a sua estrita leitura e improvisações nela inspiradas ou dela derivadas, alturas havendo em que se tornou difícil distinguir o que estava notado e o que foi espontâneo. Harmónicos, dissonâncias, choques de frequências, multifónicos, microtons: deste tipo de materiais se fez a proposta, criando uma zona de reconciliação entre a sensualidade das formas e o cerebralismo dos processos. Mais uma vez do Mar revelou estar numa excelente fase do seu percurso e especialmente cativante foi o modo como Calvi usou a voz em uníssono com o clarinete baixo, como se fosse o Ian Anderson (flautista dos Jethro Tull) das madeiras.
“Zoom” desfeito e grande plano: pelo que se ouviu no Fest deste ano, a música improvisada está de óptima saúde no nosso país, e ainda capaz de nos oferecer coisas novas e diferentes. Valerá a pena acompanhar os próximos episódios desta cena sedimentada à volta da Creative Sources. O mundo está criado, resta-lhe que viva… Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)

Father, Son & Holy Ghost

photo: Davide Piersanti, Matthias Bauer, Matthias Müller & Ernesto Rodrigues


If Carlos Zingaro is the Father of the avantgarde, free jazz and free improvised string music in Portugal, Ernesto is the Holy Ghost, and his biological son, Guilhermo, is the Son, completing the Trinity. The true father and son play often together, but not always. They belong to world leaders of free improvisation with strings, no doubt about it. They are strongly connected to Creative Sources Recordings label, grounded by Ernesto. [...] Maciej Lewenstein

Ezz-thetics

There may be no more utopian ideal of music (save for a Cagean walk in the woods) than the free-improvising orchestra, a group coming together with only a minimal plan if any, a spontaneous dream of community as sound, sound as community. It can be as beautiful and terrible as a traffic jam with horns laid on, a storm in the mountains, a summer explosion of crickets and cicadas or a troupe of Geiger-counter-wielding metal hunters arriving at an unmarked mine field (a massed language of clicks followed by much mixed sound). Conversely, it can be as dreary as a faculty meeting with multiple agendas, recurring components and suddenly-sprung team-building exercises that you didn’t anticipate (or did).

Lisbon is increasingly a producer of large-ensemble free improvisation (like the notable Lisbon Freedom Unit reviewed in this issue’s Moment’s Notice), most often under the direction of violinist/violist Ernesto Rodrigues. Rodrigues is the founder/director of the Creative Sources label, one of the most active free improvisation labels in the world; recently he has turned increasingly to larger ensembles. Among the early works on Creative Sources, such events are rare, like Rodrigues and his cellist son Guilherme playing with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, GIO Poetics (CS114). There’s also a three-CD set released in 2007 of early works by the Rodrigues-led Variable Geometry Orchestra (VGO), a very large grouping drawing on the breadth of the Lisbon improvising community. In the past few years, though, Rodrigues has been leading and recording a host of different shifting groups, like Isotope Ensemble, String Theory, Suspensão, Diceros, Octopus and IKB, as well as the now venerable VGO.

Part of what makes the recent activity possible is the scale of the Lisbon improvising community, a remarkably active group that has grown immensely in the 21st century. The city is home to two of the most active labels for free jazz and improvised music, Pedro Costa’s Clean Feed and Rodrigues’ Creative Sources, and the community of musicians, used to relatively scant rewards, feels more collective and collegial than cutthroat competitive. Among them, too, are musicians who readily move between free jazz and various modes of free improvisation, like cellist Miguel Mira, guitarist Luis Lopes, pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and bassist Hernâni Faustino.

As a frequent summer visitor, I can’t help but include Lisbon’s ambitious, forward-thinking festival, Jazz em Agosto, among the inspirations. It has provided a multitude of opportunities to hear the greatest of large improvising ensembles, including many that rarely get to travel far from their home bases. Over the past 35 years, Sun Ra, Trevor Watts, George Russell, Willem Breuker, Kenny Wheeler, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Otomo Yoshihide, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Frode Gjerstad, Peter Brötzmann, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris and Barry Guy have presented improvising orchestras in Lisbon, along with the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra, Rova’s Orkestrova – Ascension and even Vancouver’s NOW Orchestra, a Canadian band that has likely played Lisbon as often as it’s played Toronto.

While Rodrigues’ several ensembles function on different principles of musical space and time, they have certain key characteristics in common, from their form to their presentation. There are always Rodrigues’ wide-ranging sources of inspiration, analogies drawn from geography or cosmology or the table of elements, and the music the orchestras develop is alive with multiple systems, internal dialogues and memoranda, parallels to other processes and aspects of thought just below the surface, a kind of collective mind, an auditory encyclopedia, a special group consciousness born of long familiarity.

There’s something about the activity that’s reminiscent of Bernie Kraus’s Great Animal Orchestra and its account of the origins of music in the natural environment. It’s sound-friendly, with a kind of pure musicality, relaxed in a way that’s in sharp contrast to the inbuilt theatricality of much conduction, that can sometimes feel like Canetti’s notorious description (in Crowds and Power) of the 19th century conductor, but further drained of all musical rigor.

I’m restricting my comments here to just a few of these groups and releases. It’s one of the difficult aspects of coming to terms with this music that there’s just so much of it and that it’s so rich, given the frequency with which Rodrigues convenes these orchestras and the quality of their music.

VARIABLE GEOMETRY ORCHESTRA

The VGO is the mother of all Rodrigues’ larger projects. In 2007, he released Stills, the three-CD set of the group that occupies a special place, CS100, in the Creative Sources catalogue. It was already a sprawling ensemble, rich in winds, percussion and electronics, taking in a broad swath of the Lisbon musical community. At the time it included musicians like electronic improviser Raphael Toral, local free jazz pioneer Sei Miguel, Brazilian saxophonist Alipio C Neto and the young pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro who would soon distinguish himself in Red Trio.

Through the years, numerous musicians have passed through the large ensembles, but there’s a core of musicians who frequently appear. Central to the project is the electronic musician Carlos Santos, who in addition to playing acts as recording and mixing engineer, and who is further responsible for Creative Sources cover designs. Others who appear frequently include alto saxophonist Nuno Torres, trombonist Eduardo Chagas and guitarist Abdul Moimême.

Rodrigues is highly articulate about the dynamics and contraries that inform the various ensembles, and the recent proliferation of mid-size ensembles (anywhere from roughly eight to 18 musicians) has given the VGO an increasingly distinct identity in terms of its large forces. It’s also distinguished by the significant role of conduction, but even here Rodrigues’ bandleading is of the gentlest, most productive, least theatrical sort. Here’s his description of the group and how he conceptualizes conduction:

“The music produced by the VGO results from layers of acoustic and electronic sound matter that constantly search for detail and meaning. Its sounds contain subliminal as well as psycho-acoustic characteristics and include the possibility of complete silence. The music emerges as if from nothingness only to disappear once again back into it. Thus chaos is formally organized with the use of new concepts of indeterminism and instantaneous composition, as well as through the asymmetrical eruption of alternated moments of sound and silence (the absence of identifiable sound). Nevertheless, sound prevails.

“The conduction is operated by balancing the sound masses that travel in the acoustic space, dictating the construction of the real-time composition, and thus revealing the organized juxtaposition of specific instruments as mobile sound groups. This leaves space for the musicians to regain their natural rhythm and breathing, as well as their sense of random pulsation. It also allows them to listen to all the sound events that are happening at any given moment and thus to act accordingly. On the contrary, they can simply listen to what another musician has just begun. The musical space is thus filled only with the intrinsically essential elements.

“Another of the outstanding aspects of the orchestra is how open it is to new participants. That is one reason why it is called “variable.” The influx of new creative power is tempered only with a truly democratic spirit where hierarchy is reduced to a bare minimum, also permitting a very large number of combinations and permutations of smaller ensembles to be arranged on the spur-of-the-moment. Last, but not least, the orchestra encompasses three generations of musicians who have set age aside to pursue a common contemporary language. Each performance is a Conduction.”

That silence to which Rodrigues refers is a virtual constant in his large ensembles. Regardless of the size or instrumentation, the performance begins there, in near silence, voices entering reluctantly, the music arising as a seeming necessity. The most recent VGO release is a two-CD set, Ma'adim Vallis(CS494), named for the enormous valley on Mars “about 700 km long ... over 20 km wide and 2 km deep in some places ... thought to have been carved by flowing water early in Mars’ history” (Wikipedia). The first CD, Construction #47, stretches the ensemble to 36 musicians (including a choir of four melodicas supplementing eight reeds, one of them an accordion), while the second, #48, scales it back to 19. In part based on its scale, its receptivity to saxophonists and its long history, VGO retains the strongest links to free jazz, with elements that reach back 50 years to the Jazz Composers Orchestra. Amid the vast moving blocks of sound, the sudden squalling roar of tenor saxophonist Paulo Galão harkens back to the original liberating force of musicians like Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders.

SUSPENSÃO

Suspensão is among the most intimate of these ensembles, an octet on Suspensão X, Porto Covo(CS418), from 2015, a tentet on Suspensão XI, Physis (CS496). It is one of those points where the level of group consciousness seems to be at the highest level.

According to Rodrigues, “It is mostly a tentet. Sound masses and frequency shocks are not here. The aesthetic line adopted is therefore that of orthodox reductionism, with a focus on timbral games and the maintenance of textures. It touches a lot (by the association of all contributions) with little (what each provides for the whole). The focus is on the sharp or suspensive treatments of the notes. Tension and stillness are combined in unusual ways, one undermining the other.”

Porto Covo, named for a coastal village south of Lisbon, starts with its evocative cover. The cover design by Carlos Santos is a minimalist one, light sand against contrasting blues of sky and water, with Mercator projection lines drawn over them, physical and abstract representations converging in the plane just as the two are alive in every sound. That movement that Rodrigues describes, between the tense and the still, is a kind of perfect balance, resulting in an encroaching sense of the microsecond, the infinitely detailed instant a sample of consciousness. It’s an art of great restraint, where the pop of a saxophone key can register as a significant event.

DICEROS

Rodrigues describes the group Diceros’ music as “Extended improvisation of mostly quiet, occasionally cantankerous, but always intriguing free music, primarily acoustic playing with a strong cast of string players, plus reeds, keys, and computer, creating suspenseful music of great tension and impressive restraint as the sound evolves in gradations and facets of sound.”

The CD Urze (CS426) testifies to Rodrigues’ ability to construct absolutely distinct ensembles within the broad range of his activities, even turning his personal sound palette inside out as he exchanges his violin and viola for a collection of other string instruments from distinctive folk traditions: a small harp, zither, dulcimer and rebec. The collective emphasis is on quiet instruments, and the group largely eschews both orchestral strings and the louder brass and reeds (Guilherme Rodrigues’ cello and pocket trumpet are the sole representatives). Some of the musicians in the nine-member ensemble have appeared only recently in the Creative Sources orbit, like André Hencleeday (he’s credited with megaphone on Ma’adim Vallis) who plays piano and psaltery here, or else appear infrequently, like “Flak” (João Pires de Campos), a guitarist who turns up playing acoustic in some of these large ensemble projects and who first appeared in the VGO’s Stills. Psaltery, acoustic guitar and Rodrigues’ zither are keys here, the entry point to the “little sounds,” myriad discrete events with relatively short decays, creating an unlikely pointillist blur. The winds, restricted largely to Bruno Parrinha’s clarinets and Paulo Curado’s flute, are also played with a special delicacy.

STRING THEORY (and strings in general)

Rodrigues is a dedicated string player. The Creative Sources catalogue abound in recordings with him and Guilherme in various free improvisation settings. There’s also a special place for strings among the large ensembles. The group String Theory pulls together interests in strings and physics, with Rodrigues proceeding from string theory, the notion of one-dimensional objects called strings propagating through space and interacting with each other. For Rodrigues, “This is the core idea and underlying the musical practice of this ensemble. Of variable formation, this ensemble is composed exclusively of strings (of all species and families). Everything can happen but in a controlled way. The strings family already transmits stability.”

That stability assumes the form of a drone in Tellurium (CS500), frequently a hive of sound created by a sixteen-member orchestra that tends strongly to low strings, including in its number five cellos and four basses, creating a droning, moving hive of great mass.

Sul (CS534) presents a similar string ensemble with American percussionist Andrew Drury matching discrete sounds with the string continuum. The music often has the serenity of chance composition, of an orchestral piece by Cage, with patterns that move at once toward symmetry and asymmetry. As monolithic as these performances can be, there are always instants where individual interactions can suddenly stand out. Here it’s the slashing power of the two basses, played by Hernâni Faustino and Alvaro Rosso.

This is just a brief sampling of what is already a great experiment in highly disciplined, large-scale improvisation, embodied in other groupings as well, including Isotope Ensemble, IKB and Octopus, each exploring different textures, different approaches, with sometimes subtle sonic metaphors for the elements, for particles, for the structure of time. More information about these releases is available at the Creative Sources web-site, and some of them can be readily heard at Rodrigues’ bandcamp site, a convenient point of entry to a vast and expanding world. Stuart Broomer (Point of Departure)

Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

• It seems as though I'm always starting a discussion of new albums — and it's usually plural — from Ernesto Rodrigues with some sort of disclaimer. I guess that's both because he makes so many albums, and because I continue to especially enjoy many of them. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that, and so I guess the disclaimers come into play simply because I'm devoting so much time to his music, and also because on a "per album" basis, I'm being relatively neglectful. It's the latter that eats at me sometimes (& not only regarding Rodrigues), but there are only so many hours in the day, and the alternative is to say nothing, and so to feel as though good work is being ignored (which is also why I feel less of an urge to discuss albums that other people are discussing, although I do do that sometimes anyway). And then regarding the former, I haven't actually heard it, but I often imagine people thinking "Why is he always discussing the same musician?" Well, not always.... but Ernesto is creating a lot of music that I value, and in fact that often fits right into my priorities here in general. (And beyond that, he also releases a lot of great albums by other people too, often musicians who are unknown at the time, yet go on to more.... I can't even count the number of times I've "discovered" someone only to see that they already have a Creative Sources album. I don't know if Ernesto does all of his own talent scouting, but however that works, it's been very successful, and across a range of styles.) Moreover, although Ernesto plays with several of the same musicians over & over, he also engages much more widely, and that gives many of his albums very different characters. Even his personal discography has come to encompass hundreds of musicians, and involves a variety of styles & priorities. (One might even observe that simply assembling so many musicians into so many different groups, including of various sizes, is itself impressively musical within the basic mode of relation....) Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

LISBON

photo: Guilherme Rodrigues, Udo schindler & Ernesto Rodrigues (München 2018)

Lisbon’s Hot Clube de Portugal, now more than 70 years old, is one of the world’s mythic jazz rooms. It’s an important stopping point for celebrated touring musicians, a vital space for Portuguese jazz artists and an anchoring center for jazz appreciation and education.
A school, Escola de Jazz Luís Villas-Boas, long has been part of the Hot Clube operation. “The Portuguese jazz scene is in fact surprisingly exciting,” said Inês Cunha, the club’s president since 2009. “There are now a few jazz schools, and a new generation of extraordinary musicians. But Portugal is a country in the ‘tail’ of Europe. It is harder for Portuguese musicians to play abroad. That is maybe why there are not that many Portuguese musicians known either in Europe or in the States.”
But the city’s a well-established hot spot for experimental jazz and free-improv, especially in August, thanks to Jazz em Agosto, a 35-yearold festival that has been run by Rui Neves— also a jazz broadcaster, critic and producer—for much of its history.
Regarding Lisbon’s jazz resources, Neves pointed to the improvisation-oriented Creative Sources label, run by violist Ernesto Rodriguez.
In Portugal, Neves said, “Jazz is learned at the university, and private schools are everywhere— but this is not making more creative musicians, only formatted musicians playing by the rules. However, there is in Lisbon a bunch of improvisers we can discover at the Creative Sources label who are getting some recognition.”
Additionally, the label Clean Feed, founded in Lisbon in 2001, is a prodigious supplier of recordings of improvisational and other
non-mainstream jazz albums. Josef Woodard (Down Beat)

Ernesto Rodrigues Quinteto

Aglutinador de gentes talentosas em inúmeras e variadas formações num valoroso trajecto de anos e anos, o mentor da imparável Creative Sources apresenta nas Damas um novo quinteto assente nas cordas e na percussão. Ao chamamento do violino e da viola d'arco de Ernesto Rodrigues respondem o violoncelo de Miguel Mira, o contrabaixo de Hernâni Faustino, a guitarra de Luis Lopes e a percussão de Gabriel Ferrandini. Proposta pouco usual vinda de um músico com aptidão larga para o desafio representada por músicos bem reconhecidos nesta casa e nas lides das músicas mais indefiníveis - da improvisação livre à contemporânea, do jazz ao lower case. (Damas Bar)