Pedro Alves Sousa, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Gabriel Ferrandini: Cloud at rest

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 2024-07-02
opakowanie: Gatefoldowe etui
opis:
freejazzblog.org
Recorded over four days in Portugal’s Goethe Institute in November, 2019, this captures a highly interactive trio made up of distinguished Lisbon improvisers with a significant shared history. Pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini began their partnership in the Red Trio with bassist Hernani Faustino in 2008. When they recorded their tenth anniversary Celebration Band (No Business), tenor saxophonist Pedro Alves Sousa was among the saxophonists. Sousa appears in Ferrandini’s trio Volúpias (Clean Feed); Luís Lopes’ nine-member Lisbon Freedom Unit (Clean Feed) included all three, as does the recently released 2012 workshop orchestra, Evan Parker "X-Jazz Ensemble," playing A Schist Story (JACC). Sousa and Ferrandini have also played as a duo, happily dubbed Peter/Gabriel.
That degree of familiarity contributes much to the spacious ease that characterizes the music heard here. During his evolution as a drummer, Ferrandini has increasingly emphasized a light, spare, rapid approach, the movement and sound of his sticks suggesting twigs or knitting needles, while Pinheiro’s fluent creative lines and clusters possess a similar quality. If the two suggest a suspension of gravity, Sousa presents a refined counterbalance, his tenor sound and line sometimes suggesting Evan Parker, to subtle to be often cited as a style marker. It’s a warmly hollow, slightly muted sound in which the high frequencies are seemingly rolled off, brightness instead emerging in a highly mobile, free line that comfortably leaps intervals and registers.
The CD jacket provides a strong visual correlative to the music, an image of a gold nugget floating in dark space with clouds floating overhead; the back cover depicts an exploding gold nugget, all attributed to Francis Bacon with Clouds by Caravaggio. The eight episodic titles derive from this:
“Exploding”, “Nugget”, ‘Francis”, “Clouds”, “Background’, “Caravaggio”, “Shining”, “Crystal”.
There’s substantial variation here. “Clouds”, a mere 2’24”, is a complex yet lyrical piano piece for its first 90 seconds before Sousa, and then Ferrandini, enter; similarly brief, “Background” has an initial statement by Sousa before the others enter. The concluding “Crystal” runs to ten minutes, but it has a developing structure in which solos, duets and trios present contrasting segments.
The group creates complex space by contrasting density and pace: "Caravaggio” has a stretch of slow, intensely percussive piano and rapid-fire tenor to create tension. ‘Shining” has a single multiphonic tenor blast as interlude to a moody piano exploration. The ultimate effect of these pieces combines the perpetuity of great architecture with the shorthand communication of a friend, a dance between the instantaneous and the eternal.
It’s a genuinely open event in the art of improvisation, a rich stream of dialogue in a fluid language.

All music by Pedro Alves Sousa, Rodrigo Pinheiro and Gabriel Ferrandini
Recorded by Rodrigo Pinheiro at Goethe Institut on the 25th to 29th of November 2019, Lisboa
Mixed by Rodrigo Pinheiro, Pedro Alves Sousa and Gabriel Ferrandini
Mastered by Rodrigo Pinheiro
Graphic design by Ana Baliza
Inside Photo by Pedro Alfacinha
Cover image exploding nugget of gold painted by Francis Bacon with clouds on the background painted by Caravaggio
Produced by Pedro Alves Sousa, Rodrigo Pinheiro and Gabriel Ferrandini
Executive Producer: Phonogram Unit
Thanks to Goethe-Institut Portugal and special thanks to Julia Klein for making possible the recording

muzycy:
Pedro Alves Sousa: tenor saxophone
Rodrigo Pinheiro: piano
Gabriel Ferrandini: drums and percussion

utwory:
1. Exploding 06:12
2. Nugget 11:17
3. Francis 04:32
4. Clouds 02:26
5. Background 02:43
6. Caravaggio 05:26
7. Shining 05:37
8. Crystal 09:59

wydano: October 7, 2022
nagrano: Recorded by Rodrigo Pinheiro at Goethe Institut on the 25th to 29th of November 2019, Lisboa