amoa hi

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS367, Lisbon 2016

1. omama - 09'17''

2. yõrixiama - 08'15''

3. ayokora - 10'55''

4. sitipari si - 05'06''

5. rõrõ konari - 13'08''

6. remoremo moxi - 09'04''

Marco Scarassatti - Kreiser (self-made instrument)

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola

Guilherme Rodrigues - Cello, Pocket Trumpet

Nuno Torres - Alto Saxophone

Recorded in March 2016, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/amoa-hi

Reviews

É com músicos portugueses que o improvisador e inventor de «esculturas sonoras», como lhes chama, Marco Scarassatti assina o seu trabalho mais próximo da mística indígena do Brasil, e se “amoa hi” não reproduz propriamente a música dos índios do Amazonas, adopta o espírito desta de forma brilhante. Com um forte cariz imagético – poderia funcionar como a banda sonora de um filme etnográfico ou, melhor ainda, de ficção –, os seis temas (todos improvisações) reunidos não só têm como títulos expressões autóctones (exemplos são “ayokora”, “rõrõ konari” ou “remoremo moxi”) como nos induzem imagens da floresta profunda, “entregando-nos” as mesmas com uma aura de mistério e um carácter onírico que nos leva a querer parar tudo o que estamos a fazer para nos deixarmos transportar por este mundo acústico muito próprio.

Fica imediatamente claro que, se os nomes de Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues e Nuno Torres figuram ao lado do de Scarassati na bela capa (de Carlos Santos), este é, sobretudo, um disco do artista sediado em Belo Horizonte. As coordenadas derivam da tendência reducionista da improvisação, como esta dando primazia aos timbres e às texturas, mas a permanente agitação distingue a proposta de tudo aquilo que se fez sobre a bandeira do “near silence”. Em termos de filiação estética, terá mais que ver com as abordagens de um Hugh Davies, uma das referências maiores da criação musical com novos instrumentos, na associação deste com músicos que utilizavam instrumentos convencionais com técnicas extensivas e vocabulários alternativos. Mas tem algo mais que se lhe diga, e isso é, aqui, o essencial: uma espécie de neoprimitivismo que procura regressar à origem da organização dos sons para propor outro caminho que não o tomado pela música ocidental. Sublimes momentos vos esperam. Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)

Após Rios Enclausurados e Rumor, Scarassatti lançou este ano Amoa Hi, também pelo selo português Creative Sources, também gravado em uma sessão de improviso, desta vez ao lado de Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues e Nuno Torres. Mais atmosférico e musicalmente direcionado do que os anteriores— percebemos de fato um conjunto de músicos construindo uma estrutura musical, com momentos e progressões — Amoa Hi é também mais diversificado na paleta de sons. Serialismo drone, em que cada linha se entrelaça com a outra, e assim por diante. Bernardo Oliveira (O Cafezinho)

"Amoa Hi" é a busca por um tipo de música originária (a indígena) que sumiu na cristalização da produção contemporânea. É essencial ouvir isso. Henrique Barbosa Justini (Anthem Albums)

Fort heureusement, Creative Sources publie des compacts insérés dans des pochettes cartonnées nettement plus plates et commodes à ranger que les anciens jewel-box plastiques cassables et moins esthétiques.

 En effet, la production CS, au départ un micro label radical responsable du développement du réductionnisme, new silence, lower case et autres tendances expérimentales minimalistes (de tout acabit), est devenue exponentielle. Elle frise aujourd’hui les 400 numéros avec une quasi absence de personnalités « d’envergure » au point de vue de la notoriété. On note ici et là, une fois et par hasard, les noms de Paul Lovens et John Edwards avec Paul Hubweber. Un grand nombre des artistes du catalogue CS sont le plus souvent peu connus en dehors de la région où ils opèrent et une bonne partie des « minimalistes » qui avaient été publiés aux premières heures du label ne s’y manifestent plus. Aussi CS publie (toutes ?) les nombreuses sessions et des concerts d’Ernesto Rodrigues et de son fils Guilhermo en compagnie d’improvisateurs portugais et étrangers et  quelques grands ensembles très cohérents sous sa direction qui réunissent un nombre impressionnant de musiciens portugais (Variable Geometry Orchestra, Ensemble IKB). Pour une ville comme Lisbonne, c’est remarquable vu les difficultés avec lesquelles se débattent les improvisateurs radicaux. Ses enregistrements  ont souvent le bonheur d’illustrer ses tentatives réussies à improviser librement en suivant des démarches et cheminements diversifiés. En ce qui me concerne, Ernesto est devenu un des improvisateurs incontournables  des années 2000 et suivantes avec Jacques Demierre, Urs Leimgruber, Rhodri Davies, Michel Doneda , Birgit Ulher etc…. parmi ceux qui apportent de l‘eau au moulin de la scène. Enregistré au plus près de l’émission du son, le groupe d’Amoa hi révèle les interstices, l’épiderme, les craquements, le souffle dans l’acte de jouer en dématérialisant la spécificité de l’instrument de musique. Chacun d’eux est devenu un générateur de sons, un objet sonique envisagé plutôt comme une sculpture sonore, pour en exposer les propriétés timbrales et texturales de leur mécanique vibratoire. La forme musicale qui s’échappe de leur pratique est essentiellement une expression bruitiste. Les valeurs harmoniques, pulsations et accents sont soigneusement évités. La tension du corps, des doigts ou de la bouche, en est fort relâchée et l’humeur et les intensions expressives qui affecte les sons dans le jeu instrumental sont neutres, indifférenciées. Plutôt qu’expression du corps des musiciens et de leurs émotions dans l’échange, l’improvisation se focalise sur la machinerie instrumentale comme si on en révélait la nature de ses composants : bois, vernis et crin (les Rodrigues), tube, anche et air (Torres) et la matière d’un curieux instrument fait maison (Scarassati). À suivre. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Orynx)

My discussion of Chant from a couple of weeks ago seems like a good starting point for a discussion of some recent releases from Ernesto Rodrigues & Creative Sources. The first album I want to mention especially is Amoa hi, recorded in Lisbon this past March by a quartet consisting of Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues (the latter also on pocket trumpet, in addition to his regular cello), frequent collaborator Nuno Torres on alto sax, and Marco Scarassatti (b.1971) on self-made instruments. The instrument (or instruments) is called the "kraiser" on the album, and whereas I wasn't able to determine exactly what that is, there is a Youtube (a site I do not suggest that you support) video of Scarassatti in a duo improvisation with a Marcelo Kraiser, and I assume that the sorts of objects they use are similar, perhaps identical. Scarassatti is a professor in Brazil, and "amoa hi" is the (mythical, if you will) "song tree" of the Yanomami (described elsewhere as "forest people") of Northwest Brazil. Whereas Chant includes explicit invocations of serial music & other contemporary "classical" techniques, Amoa hi is more generally evocative of an environmental setting & human activity. It's not an exploration of audibility, but there is a definite sense of emergent sound amidst a breathing-like pulse of tension & relaxation. In this case, what we might imagine as sounds of the forest are mediated more by distant human banging or traffic than by classical abstraction, and such "echoes" can mark a change of scene. The plucking & rubbing & such involved might suggest something of the "energized surfaces" of Gino Robair (such as on The Apophonics On Air, an album that comes off sounding much more like a standard sax trio in this context), and the overall texture & pace of the quartet remind me a bit of the Sandra Weiss Quintet on Ramble. In all three cases, I imagine that actually watching the performers would be illuminating, and the kraiser of Amoa hi does remain something of a mystery as it intersects with some of the more standard concerns of the Rodrigueses. (And I have watched people play some rather elaborately home-welded objects here in California, so might have some reasonable guesses as to what's involved.) Much of the mood, including a focus on strings, does seem rather similar to that of Chant, although here involving more the hustle of modern industrial life (at a distance) than an abstract literary pole. 26 October 2016. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Titled for the Amazonas Indians, Brazilian sound sculptor Marco Scarassatti performs on his self-made instrument the Kraiser in a quartet with Creative Sources regulars Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues, and Nuno Torres for a dream-like set of improvisations named with indigenous expressions, blending neoprimitivism with creative acoustic improvisation. (Squidco)

The world of the American maverick composers and performers, including still controvertial figures such as Harry Partch, Henry Brant and Anthony Braxton, bears intergenerational fruit on this fascinating and beautiful quartet session. Marco Scarassatti's self-made instruments are placed in the service of Creative Sources stalwarts Ernesto and Guilherme Rodriguez along with Nuno Torres, wielding their standard viola, pocket trumpet and cello to create luscious but sparse soundscapes that traverse the no-man's land between Spontaneous Music Ensemble and much of what the Wandelweiser label releases.
Whatever the ethnic concerns that dictate the cryptic titles, these are pieces imbued with an unerring sense of continually changing soft-focus clarity. There's almost a guilty pleasure gained from luxuriating in the triadic opening of "Omama." It swells, looms larger than life but softly, addictively sweet yet foundationally rock-solid, only to prove ephemeral, fading into a post-Cagian silence that nearly erases the sonority from memory in anticipation of what follows. Superficially similar, the drones on "Remoremo Moxi" are shot through, beneath the tranquil surface, with pointillistic clangs, scratches and metallic twangings, suggesting the kinds of wire-and-bar configuration of the instrument Scarassatti is playing on this extraordinary improvisation; but the piece is important for another and deeper reason: part of the way through, the vastly reverberant space the quartet is creating fades to near black, and suddenly, especially on headphones, the room in which the recording is actually taking place swims into sharp focus. The space is not small but not overly large, but it's completely different than the picture painted by the various instrumental configurations would imply.

Repeated listening reveals a constantly shifting world of minute changes amidst a background of quasi-discomfort similar to that in Faure's Requiem. The experience of inhabiting these six diverse planes of sound is both disembodying and somehow disquieting. Pitch becomes a matter of as much relativity as timbre and duration, while the surface timbres shift with the softness of butter, and what transpires beneath can take on the strength of steel or the durability of stone. The quartet doesn't reveal its secrets easily, but once glimpsed, they are not soon forgotten. Marc Medwin (The Squid’s Ear)

Siete Colores

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS355, Lisbon 2016

1. 23°44′00″S 65°29′00″O - 16'46''

2. 4170m - 31'28''

Fernando Perales - Electric Guitar & Electronics

Abdul Moimême - Prepared Electric Guitar

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola

Recorded in January 2016, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/siete-colores

Reviews

Siete Colores presents a trio of Rodrigues’ viola and the dual electric guitars of Moimême and Argentinean Fernando Perales (perhaps best known for the group Reynols with Anla Courtis). As “23º44'00"S 65º29'00" O” opens what’s immediately notable is the reverb, which lends the impression the music was recorded in a cavernous environment. However, as the piece moves on, there are hints this might be an illusion—effects applied to Perales’ guitar—and that your brain has been fooled in the way reverb easily fools it: into imagining the great open space required to produce what are only artificial reflections of sound. For their part, Rodrigues and Moimême inhabit this imaginary cavern, sounding its depths, generating music with the odd quality of being both ominous and bright.

At the start of “4170 m”, Rodrigues touches bow to string with such lightness that it sounds like the faintest breath through a horn, a remarkable evocation of respiration via vibrating string. The guitars sound so distant, it’s as though they are in another room, or part of another recording altogether that someone is listening to somewhere else far away. Listening feels like a suspension—like walls and floors have dropped away and no matter which direction you reach, nothing solid, tangible will ever be touched. Sound waves may travel through the medium of air, but this music produces a kind of synesthesia, a mental image of prismatic light rippling through the aether, or sunrays splayed upon Seven Colors Hill in northwest Argentina, from which the album takes its name. Dan Sorrells (The Free Jazz Collective)

Deux longues pièces pour un total de 48 minutes avec des titres chiffrés dont je vous passe le détail. Deux guitaristes : Fernando Perales, electric guitar & electronics et Abdul Moimême : prepared electric guitar avec Ernesto Rodrigues au violon alto. Dans la lignée de Keith Rowe (A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality 1989) et de Fred Frith qui prolongea brillamment le travail de son aîné lorsque Keith avait pour un temps abandonné la scène musicale (Live In Japan Vol 1 & 2). Restée longtemps une pratique marginale, cette manière de traiter la guitare en objet sonore, couchée sur une table, environnée d’objets, d’effets, chambre d’écho, trafiquée, préparée, malmenée est devenue un lieu commun de la scène expérimentale et improvisée, ou noise. Mais je dois dire que la manière très présente et exceptionnelle de comment c’est enregistré, la dynamique et la relation / intégration entre les deux guitaristes et leurs jeux respectifs, le sens harmonique, tout concourt à rendre la musique de Siete Colores séduisante et requérante. Et Ernesto Rodigues, me direz-vous ? Son jeu s’insère dans le pandemonium des guitaristes de manière discrète comme si son alto et son archet faisait partie intégrante des installations de ses compères. On devine des frottements lents qui semblent être produits par l’alto. Et bien sûr au  n° 2 vers les minutes 22/ 23. Qui joue quoi d’ailleurs importe peu. Le paysage sonore évolue sans cesse, scories du son des cordes frottées à l’éponge métallique ou avec d’autres ustensiles, altération du son vers une densité réverbérante, frottements métallisés, chocs subits et notes tenues, voix irréelles et multipliées, bruissements industriels, grattages minutieux, crissements amples, feedback ténu, sustain irisé, cycles lents, flottements de vibrations métalliques, machineries du rêve. Ce que j’apprécie particulièrement est la profonde qualité sonore et l’absence de faux pas / vulgarité amplifiée comme trop souvent. Un excellent disque d’une musique en constante évolution où l’apparence statique est sublimée par une sensibilité sonore contagieuse. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Orynx)

Gravity

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS361, Lisbon 2016

1. Gravity - 39'36''

STRING THEORY

Ernesto Rodrigues - viola, harp
Raquel Fernandes - violin
Maria do Mar - violin
David Maranha - violin
Guilherme Rodrigues - cello
Yu Lin Humm - cello
Helena Espvall - cello
Miguel Ivo Cruz - viola da gamba
Bernardo Álvares - double bass
João Madeira - double bass
Abdul Moimême - classical guitar, 12 string acoustic guitar, mandolin
Flak - acoustic guitar
Emídio Buchinho - acoustic guitar
John Klima - acoustic bass guitar
Adriana Sá - zither
Joana Bagulho - harpsichord
Simão Costa - piano

Recorded in March 2016, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/gravity

Reviews

Sans nul doute, un des plus beaux projets réalisés par la galaxie des improvisateurs portugais fédérés autour de l’altiste Ernesto Rodrigues et de ses amis. Tous les instruments utilisés par les dix-huit musiciens présents sont « à cordes » qu’elles soient frottées (violons, violes de gambe, violoncelles, contrebasses), pincées (guitares, cithares, harpes) ou frappées / pincées par un mécanisme à clavier (piano, clavecin). Gravity est une longue improvisation qui occupe toute la durée du compact, excellemment enregistrée et préparée pour le disque par Ernesto lui-même. Quand on imagine les difficultés rencontrées pour trouver un lieu décent, rassembler autant de musiciens, les focaliser sur une idée bien précise comme cet orchestre à cordes, on peut d’ores et déjà saluer le travail extraordinaire de ces musiciens portugais réunis par Ernesto Rodrigues, lui-même venant de produire en 2016 pas moins de dix-huit albums avec ses collaborations. Un disque avec 18 musiciens et 18 albums Creative Sources, dont quatre présentent la musique d’ensembles collectifs plus imposants tels le présent String Theory, Théatron, IKB et Variable Geometry Orchestra, ces deux derniers ensembles n’étant pas à leur coup d’essai. Les effectifs du Variable Geometry Orchestra dans Quasar leur nouvel album culminent à 46 musiciens. Collectivement et musicalement, il s’agit donc d’une œuvre et un travail de longue haleine et on peut d’ores et déjà considérer la personnalité d’Ernesto Rodrigues, l’animateur infatigable de Lisbonne aussi incontournable que celles d’Eddie Prévost, Rhodri Davies, Michel Doneda ou Franz Hautzinger, par exemple, parmi les artistes qui ont contribué à renouveler la pratique de l’improvisation libre ces vingt dernières années vers des formes empreintes de minimalisme, mot qualifiant grossièrement les tendances lower-case, réductionnistes, new silence, etc... Et quoi de plus exemplaire que ce Gravity qui, débutant par un ostinato fantomatique, visite les agrégats de sons, de frottements, de pincements, de curieuses vibrations, de grincements dynamiques dans une vision kalidéoscopique et arachnéenne de l’action instrumentale cordiste. Violoncelle ou guitare préparées, miasmes de violon, grattages, sons fantômes, bruissements mystérieux.Bien qu’il semble qu’un parcours obligé soit tracé, certains instruments interviennent de concert comme si le moment était choisi : l’improvisation libre et leurs qualités innées d’écoute mutuelle, d’action et de réaction simultanées et de finesse dans l’empathie, permettent aux compagnons de String Theory de tracer un chemin, de construire un univers à la fois homogène et hétérogène suivant le point de vue sur lequel on se place. En effet, une communauté de sentiment, une température ambiante partagée par chacun se dessine et relie toutes les spécificités sonores, timbrales, les dynamiques, les affirmations franches et les connivences enjouées qui affleurent au long des trente neuf minutes trente cinq secondes. Les actions des musiciens peuvent se révéler très diversifiées ou concentrées dans un même élan selon le feeling de chacun. Gravity est un enregistrement unique dans les annales de la musique improvisée et c’est pourquoi je vais m’attarder par la suite sur les projets sœurs IKB, Variable Geometry Orchestra et Théatron dans les chroniques suivantes. Ce n’est pas tous les jours que des formations orchestrales aussi étendues soient documentées dans le domaine de l’improvisation contemporaine. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Orynx)

A sense of both lightness and weight drawn from Portuguese viola player's Ernesto Rodrigues' 18-piece String Theory, in a large and detailed improvisation using an incredible array of string sources, including viola, harp, violin, cello, viola da gamba, double bass, classical, acoustic and 12-string guitars, mandolin, zither, harpsichord, and piano. (Squidco)

New Dynamics

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS362, Lisbon 2016

1. I - 22'40''

2. II - 12'55''

3. III - 12'16''

Roland Ramanan - Trumpet

Nuno Torres - Alto saxophone

Ernesto Rodrigues – Viola

Bernardo Álvares - Double Bass

Recorded in April 2016, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/new-dynamics

Reviews

A decision to write about something, at least as articulated above, is often already premised on a decision to hear something. The experience of encountering compelling music spontaneously can be special, but unfortunately, my circumstances are such that this very rarely happens. To find something I'll particularly enjoy, I generally have to notice & select an opportunity first, whether that's going to a location (venue), getting a recording (physical or otherwise), or even reading someone's recommendations. The latter usually involves making further choices (rather than adopting the entire list of recommendations wholesale). The contours of the present project provide me with some guidance, in terms of which productions are more likely to fit, but as such a project-based approach immediately suggests, there's a risk of confirming my own biases & so missing experiences that might well be exemplary. One might say that my personal familiarity creates its own resonance conditions. I try to counter this pull by listening occasionally to something that seems like it'll be totally different from my usual material, but even that sense of difference or unfamiliarity is obviously itself conditioned by familiarity — i.e. as an exception. (But sometimes that random object does pull me in a new direction.)

Within such a context, one might describe a record label as instantiating a set of recommendations: The editor or editors have recommended these recordings, for one reason or another. There are then labels with a history of releasing albums I enjoy, and so of course I pay further attention. Even still, there are usually choices involved: I don't want to commit to hearing everything, and maybe not even everything that seems to fit the "contours" of this project, as I put it above. I mention this situation not only because it relates closely to some of the "process" (or practice) ideas that I've been articulating around self formation, but because Creative Sources is once again my subject, and it offers a canonical example of such a label-based set of recommendations: The volume of releases is high — I count twenty-five so far this year, more or less — and they generally appear with no description. I'm not sure how well some album descriptions (or reviews, for that matter) really serve to improve my choice of what to hear, since they might e.g. emphasize features I find tangential to such desires. However, no description at all, particularly when the albums involve musicians with whom I am not otherwise familiar (and for that matter, having heard someone in a couple of settings hardly serves to indicate everything they might ever do), puts a rather stark edge on the issue of choice. I've nudged Creative Sources label editor Ernesto Rodrigues for suggestions, but he seems reluctant to offer them, perhaps because such suggestions might have too much effect on feedback he subsequently receives — reciprocal to the issues I've raised here. I don't know. (And, after all, by definition, he is recommending all of his recordings anyway. Is it fair to highlight some over others?) In any case, I continue to make my choices, some more informed (with the dangerous resonance that implies) than others, and hear a subset of new Creative Sources albums. (One of the contours of my practice continues to be a high priority on new productions.)

All that said, I've particularly enjoyed the recent improvised quartet album New Dynamics by Roland Ramanan, Nuno Torres, Ernesto Rodrigues, & Bernardo Álvares. An obvious point of comparison for this album is last year's Nor, considering that it shares two of the musicians & uses the same set of instruments. (Both albums also have three medium-length tracks.) Indeed, I had trouble finding precedents for these two-wind & two-string quartets, although one wouldn't say that such an ensemble seems radical. It would be equally wrong to say that the instrumental constitution creates a certain mood, as well, since the moods are rather different on these albums. There is, however, as one might imagine, a distinct "chamber" quality, even if extended technique is common. So whereas Nor includes Berlin improvisers Axel Dörner & Alexander Frangenheim, New Dynamics instead includes Roland Ramanan & Bernardo Álvares. (It would be wrong to call them substitutes. It is, dare I say it, a new dynamic.) Álvares was totally unknown to me, and I didn't find any substantial information about him online; I assume that he is Portuguese. I did have some familiarity with Ramanan, a longtime member of the London Improvisers Orchestra, from his album Zubeneschamali, released on Leo Records (about which some similar things could be said, especially that Leo releases many appealing albums) in 2014, with Tom Jackson & Daniel Thompson from the trio on Hunt at the Brook. I thought that Ramanan's trumpet kind of dominated that album, which along with e.g. Compost by another related ensemble, explores the acoustic space of a church: There is a sense of finding separate spaces for the members of the trio that also informs the quartet on New Dynamics, even if its space isn't contextualized by architecture per se. (How such a notion relates to the fake "spray" amid empty/monolithic architecture on the cover graphic, I don't know, but it does seem vaguely related.) Individual instruments are generally more discernible than on many albums on which Rodrigues participates, and so one might speak more of counterpoint on New Dynamics than of notions such as the soundscape. There is also a more concrete sense of presence & projection than on Nor, which focuses more on immanent emergence: Indeed, the latter, perhaps in keeping with its partial Berlin roots, has almost an ascetic or severe quality (one might even say Nietzschean), including some higher pitches & harmonics, more percussive attacks, etc. (The trumpet "calls," in the sense used in the discussion of Neutral Nation in this space earlier this month, remain immanent to an emerging landscape, rather than actually emerging or transcending.) New Dynamics thus comes off as more human (dialogic, even) & worldly than environmental, and one might ask what new sorts of dynamics emerge. Different instruments suggest their own different temporalities: By this, I mean generally speaking that the way one interacts with a particular instrument, the way it interfaces with the body, the way it resonates, has a particular temporality or time-scale. One can play slower or faster, but within limits, and there are temporal regions that "fit" the instrument better than others. One could further say that these sorts of relations are often explored in soundscape-type ensembles, but without necessarily seeking a common temporality by which to articulate a counterpoint. (In other words, there must be some temporal relation or correspondence in order to have counterpoint.) New Dynamics does this in a rather human way, including dodecaphony, while still respecting the differing temporal dynamics of the instruments — which, helpfully, are not all that different in the first place. (In this seeming "human" emphasis, then, it differs from e.g. Sediment, a quartet album that otherwise maintains a similarly resolute acoustic stance & pace of interaction.) So a new language of improvised, contrapuntal quartet interaction? That's compelling. (And just how contingent was my hearing of this album in the first place? I cannot really say.) 23 May 2016. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

On a connu le trompettiste londonien Roland Ramanan comme « improvisateur soliste » il y a une quinzaine d’années dans son propre Roland Ramanan Quartet en compagnie de Marcio Mattos au violoncelle, de Simon H Fell à la contrebasse et de Mark Sanders à la batterie (Shaken Emanem 4081 et Cesura Emanem 4123). On avait noté à l’époque que Cesura se rapprochait de l’improvisation libre collective, tendance confirmée en 2014 par Zubeneschamali, un excellent enregistrement en trio avec le clarinettiste Tom Jackson et le guitariste Daniel Thompson (Leo Records 700, chroniqué par votre serviteur). Ce penchant pour une musique de chambre improvisée pleine de détails, d’interactions, toute en finesse et subtilité où plusieurs techniques alternatives et étendues sont développées et combinées les unes aux autres, s’affirme ici dans le bien nommé New Dynamics. Le violoniste alto Ernesto Rodrigues, Nuno Torres, le saxophoniste explorateur attitré de ses péripéties, et le contrebassiste Bernardo Alvares se révèlent être des partenaires de choix dans cette direction. Comme je l’ai signalé dans des chroniques précédentes, si le travail de Rodrigues témoign(ai)ent d’un radicalisme « ultra » en matière d’improvisation , il a appris à adapter son jeu intransigeant à la démarche de ses partenaires  en enrichissant sa palette sonore et musicale sans trahir sa démarche. En outre, il a le chic pour inclure systématiquement de nouvelles personnalités dans les projets qu’il publie sur son label Creative Sources. Et ce qui frappe dans ces New Dynamics, c’est la pertinence des audaces sonores du trompettiste, assumant les difficultés inhérentes à son instrument en métamorphosant, travestissant, sublimant le son de la trompette avec l’aide de sourdines, de vocalisations, d’écrasements de la colonne d’air, faisant éclater le registre aigu sans un cri et traduisant certaines nuances sonores des cordes dans le détail de son jeu. Aussi, il a une belle imagination n’hésitant pas à émettre des propositions fortes et tranchées qu’il transforme ensuite spontanément pour rejoindre le flux du collectif. Encore une fois, les interventions toujours renouvelées d’Ernesto à l’alto, se jouent des paramètres de l’instrument et font monter les enchères. Il a un art consommé pour jouer à l’écart de la note en glissant peu ou prou ou faisant scintiller les harmoniques. Une véritable inspiration pour ses collègues plus jeunes. Le saxophoniste Nuno Torres souffle dans la marge de l’instrument, étonnamment discret et intelligemment présent. Le contrebassiste Bernardo Alvares choisit son matériau avec pertinence avec, entre autres, des frottements soigneusement irisés qui s’intègrent bien au groupe et agissent comme une facteur d’unification des forces en présence.

C’est dans un climat de confiance et d’écoute que chacun contribue au mieux à cette suite de trois improvisations (I, II, III) en se montrant complètement en phase dans cet ensemble subtilement interactif. Savoir arrêter un élan, une phrase, s’écarter ou se rejoindre, faire de la place pour autrui, réagir en surprenant sont les maîtres mots de cette démarche improvisée. Une belle réussite enregistrée à Lisbonne en mars 2016. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Orynx)

With members of IKB, Variable Geometry Orchestra, and LIO, the free improvising/chamber quartet of Ernesto Rodriguge (viola), Bernardo Alvares (bass), Roland Ramana (trumpet), and Nuno Torres (sax), were captured live at Estrela for an intense and introspective concert. (Squidco)