September sundries

Sep­tem­ber brings along a new artis­tic sea­son — seem­ing­ly unaware that I had no vaca­tion to end the last one.

To set the tone: a playlist I’ve com­piled for MPMP​’s month­ly newslet­ter. Start­ing next month, it will fea­ture the sug­ges­tions of a bevy of sur­pris­ing guests.

The month of Sep­tem­ber — and, with it, the end of sum­mer, a new sea­son, a new phase, new projects — demands a par­tic­u­lar ener­gy. I’ll lean on the sax­o­phone (and elec­tron­ics) to share four ways of acti­vat­ing mem­o­ry, embody­ing sto­ries, and pro­ject­ing them into the future.

Three works by three major fig­ures in the Por­tuguese elec­troa­coustic music tra­di­tion that cross bound­aries of musi­cal genre: the sem­i­nal Sax-blue, by Jorge Peix­in­ho, here recov­ered and recast — as well as (of course!) excel­lent­ly per­formed — by Philippe Tro­vão; Angel Rock, by João Pedro Oliveira, record­ed by Astrus Duo — com­posed of Manuel Teles (who is quick­ly becom­ing one of the most impres­sive sax­o­phon­ists of his gen­er­a­tion) and Paulo Amen­doeira, whose debut album [MPMP] had the plea­sure of pub­lish­ing; and also S(w)inthesys, by José Luís Fer­reira, whose 50^th anniver­sary we would be cel­e­brat­ing yes­ter­day, August 31^st.

To fin­ish things off, a track from a Motion Trio album, dri­ven by Rodri­go Amado’s sax­o­phone, which shares with the rest of the music on this playlist a cer­tain cos­mopoli­tan voice (whether with a Por­tuguese accent, or not — either way). Hap­py ren­trée!

Good friends and pianists extra­or­di­naire Philippe Mar­ques and Duarte Pereira Mar­tins are releas­ing the sec­ond vol­ume of their Baila­dos Por­tugue­ses project. This time around, I’ve con­tributed with an arrange­ment of Fred­eri­co de Fre­itas’s bal­let A dança da meni­na ton­ta, which they’ll per­form again live at a release event in the Sala Bernar­do Sas­set­ti of Teatro São Luiz. Along­side it, their arrange­ment of Prokofiev’s Cin­derel­la — all chal­leng­ing, wit­ty and excit­ing music.

Nice­ly round­ing out the month is Ensem­ble Quark’s con­cert at the Kleine Sende­saal of the NDR in Han­nover. Der Wind ver­ste­ht nur den Wind will be dif­fused alongis­de an excit­ing pro­gram, which sees me join a lot of old friends and colleagues.