- 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
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)
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)
