Jazz em Agosto 2024 (Part 2/3)

 

By Paul Acquaro

 

It is Monday night at the amphitheater stage in the Gulbenkian gardens, there is a light breeze, the temperature is a bit cooler than the proceeding days, it's rather nice and relaxed. Then, the saxophone squalls, the drums jerk and the bass shudders. The band on stage is named MOVE, but it's obvious that it is not a noun in this context, no, MOVE is an imperative: MOVE!  

MOVE, by Petra Cvelbar / Gulbenkian Música

 

The Portuguese trio is a powerhouse of controlled energy. Tenor saxophonist Yedo Gibson may be the one making the announcements and pushing the melodic concepts, but there is no front-man here, each member is equally involved with making MOVE move. Drummer João Valinho can be brutal in his attack as well as deftly supportive, accenting the right moments and leaving space where needed. Electric bassist Felipe Zenicola slyly commands, however, some serious attention - his approach to the bass is utterly unique, in fact there is hardly a template that comes readily to mind. He seems to split his lines into fractals, inserting rhythmic ideas into the most surprising places. 

 

Musically insistent and heavy hitting, they also have a litheness that allowa them to go in unexpected directions at the spur of the moment. Their music is entirely improvised, which can be surprising when considering how tightly they segue from one section to another. A run of the scales with an akimbo cadence slams into a jittery bass line, and then turns at a moments notice, morphing into a blast of sound with gut wrenching velocity, and then just as quickly, lands in a calm passage. It's quite okay to wonder how they do it, and in fact, I asked. Valinho, after the feisty set, explained that the group does not prepare or compose any of their music, but they do signal to each other while playing. The signal is simply an indication that the signaler is going to change something up, follow if you want. 

 

MOVE has two recordings out on Clean Feed records, however, you'll never hear the same piece of music twice.

 

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Metro Art

A pleasure of the Jazz em Agosto festival's programming is that there is ample time left to explore the city. In previous years that an invitation has been extended my way, I've made sure to document my touristic discoveries. From the must-dos like riding the 28-Tram and visiting the Castelo de São Jorge, to traveling to the nearby mountains of Sintra, there is just a lot to do and see here (here is a link to find these stories). This time around, my explorations took me to the giant Jesus monument perched over the river, an exhausting bike ride over the Sintra mountains to the Cabo da Roca rock formations at the edge of the continent, and also to the museum of Portuguese artist Julio Pomar. 

 

A remarkably productive artist for eight decades, Pomar was born in 1926 and died only in 2018. His relationship with Portugal seemed a bit fraught, he had been imprisoned for a short while by the Salazar regime and he left Portugal in the 1960s for Paris, but his love for the sights and colors of the city is evident in many of his pieces. The museum, the Altelier Museu, is tucked away in a side street near the foot of the hill that leads to the Barrio Alto neighborhood and is just a tumble out of the 28 Tram or a short walk from several metro stations.

 

After walking around the tiled entrance, adorned with his sketches of snails and some small men with impressive penises, you enter the beautifully renovated museum space. A large open room contains the current exhibition which also continues upstairs to a loft area. The current show is called "Revolutions 1960 - 1975" and showcases how his work evolved from impressionistic works to pop-art and back. The pieces - mostly paintings but also some sculpture - are captivating.

 

But, now back to the musical program ... 

 

The Selva, by Petra Cvelbar / Gulbenkian Música

Tuesday night's show was the Portuguese band The Selva, also on the Clean Feed label. It was during was the ersatz pandemic festival, Jazz 2020 at the Gulbenkian Foundation, that the Selva came into my life, and the musical rush I felt when I first heard them has remained with me. The chance to hear them again was something I was eagerly anticipating.

 

Their concert began with a gathering of sound. They were presenting their 2023 album Camarão-Girafa (reviewed here) and began with Gonçalo Almeida's acoustic double bass presenting long, flowing bowed tones, creating a primary layer. Nuno Morão's drums were subdued at this point, providing some texture through the cymbals, and Ricardo Jacinto's cello made some agitated tones. The feel was heavy, the music droned with sudden sharp attacks and long anticipated chord changes. It was, so to say, palpable. A jump in the cello's register gripped the shoulders, an unexpected scrape of the bow against the bass strings stiffened the spine. Then, after the first wave of tension crested, Jacinto began plucking out an arabesque melody. Slow and controlled, electronics added random glitches into the music, stuttering notes and disrupted flow changed the simple musical structures.

 

Later, the drums picked up the pulse and led the music to more steady grooves, giving the cello a chance to expand on the small melodic units that had been building up cyclically. A noisy section followed, the group digging into their carefully crafted sound world of extended techniques and sensitive acoustic amplification. A bit later in the set found the three all playing their respective instruments percussively, Jacinto holding the cello in his lap and tapping it and Almeida using marimba mallets on his strings.

 

A piece in the second half of the show was arresting in its unfolding beauty (a word I try to avoid, but it truly fits here). The melody was severe, dissonant to the point of stomach dropping (like going over a sudden hill in an automobile while sitting in the back seat), and as the bass billowed, the drums kept everything securely fastened to the stage. The set eventually came to a resolution so complete that it was hard to imagine them performing an encore, but they did, recapturing the charged atmosphere in short order.

 

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The Brandon Seabrook Trio, by Petra Cvelbar / Gulbenkian Música

 

Wednesday night saw the return of the international focus with guitarist Brandon Seabrook's trio with drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist Pascal Niggenkemper subbing for Cooper-Moore - not a simple task as the home-made instruments that Cooper-Moore builds and plays with this trio are somewhat primitive but also devastatingly effective. Niggenkemper, however is also an astute music explorer, and able to both emulate Cooper-Moore's instrumental approach and also add a bit of his own embellishments, like employing light covers that can change-up his instrument's sound. With this adventerous mind-set, he fits perfectly with Seabrook, who himself combines an impulsiveness with a unique approach to his instrument. 

Seabrook works with scraps of music, slips of sound, crumbling notes and unpredictable choices, leaving a lot to the others to help shape. On the outdoor stage this evening, it seemed that Gerald Cleaver did a yeoman's effort locking down the rhythmic directions.

 

There is also a component of recklessness at play as well. For example, Seabrook picked up an LP, announced that they released an album a few years ago, then flung it haphazardly into the audience. Then, he did the most reckless thing of all: he switched to banjo, which may actually be illegal in the EU (full disclosure: I love the banjo, I've owned and played several in my life, but now reflecting on it, it was also perhaps during a somewhat reckless period as well). Regardless, Seabrook's approach to the instrument is very rhythmic, there is no claw-hammering or finger rolls, rather he plays it like a guitar, and its very metallic twang made for a wonderful complement to the group's sound. On the next tune, Seabrook upped the ante and applied a bow to the banjo's strings, which somehow sounded like an accordion.

 

It was a musically wild show. Extended techniques were the norm and the strong, almost tribal pulses of the bass and drums held it together, allowing the different musical shapes and sounds to come together in some rather extraordinary moments.

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Darius  Jones, by Petra Cvelbar / Gulbenkian Música

The mid-week stretch came to a close on Thursday evening with saxophonist Darius Jones' presentation of his latest release, fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s̶ suite but sacred) (We Jazz / Northern Spy Records). Commissioned while the NYC based saxophonist was at a residency in British Columbia, the pieces of the suite reflect the concept of the Fluxus art movement from the 1960s and 70s, which emphasized the process of creating art equally with the results. While I am not sure exactly how this was reflected in the performance this evening, during an announcement, Jones glanced up at the sky and in reaction to the rumble of a passing airplane, remarked how "this is a Fluxus moment."

 

Regardless, the music was riveting. In addition to Jones' own expressive and often joyful playing, the string quartet plus drummer Gerald Cleaver was stunning. It was, at times, easy to believe you had come to just hear the strings alone, as the presentation of the music by violinists Jesse and Josh Zubot, cellist Peggy Lee and bassist James Meger was raw, focused, and sometimes even jarring in its intensity. As a whole, they brought the opening track of the album 'Fluxus V5T 1S1' to a rousing peak. The next movement of the suite began with the violinists tapping rhythmically on their instruments' bodies while Lee bowed longer tones and Meger rattled the bow between the strings, under the bridge. Then, Jones began to play beyond the upper registers of his instrument. The piece unfolded in layers, the melody climbing over large intervallic gaps, as Cleaver added percussive accents rather than a steady pulse, both propulsive and striking.

 

The next piece 'Rainbow,' dedicated to an important figure from the Vancouver arts scene, began with a textured solo from Cleaver. He was eventually joined by a slow moving bass line, before the strings came in, coloring over the lines made by the drum and bass. Lee then played a gorgeous solo, unassuming and sonorous, followed by a bass solo that ended in a sea of applause.

 

The final segment of the music was introduced by Jones as being based on the story of Damon and Pythias, which is essentially a tale of trust and friendship. It started out as the most avant-garde of all the pieces, eventually coalescing into a melodic cycle before Jones jumped in with a frenetic and kinetic solo. The denouement was a moment to savor. The strings had settled into a gently flowing passage as Jones began to wander away from the microphone, his amplified sound quite strong, carrying easily throughout the amphitheater, playing an expressive and tender melody.

 

Phew.

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Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3