Into the Wood

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 805, Lisbon 2024

1. I - 18'50''

2. II - 11'08''

3. III - 14'49''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola

Bruno Parrinha - Bass Clarinet

João Madeira - Double Bass

Recorded May 2023, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-wood

Reviews

La registrazione rigorosamente live a Lisbona al club Desterro di Lisbona, vede tre coraggiosi improvvisatori all’opera in una situazione cameristica e ricca di energia, derivante dall’intensità del dialogo fra tre strumentisti che hanno fatto dell’estemporaneità della creazione musicale la loro ragione di vita.

Ernesto Rodrigues alla viola e João Madeira al contrabbasso incrociano le corde dei loro strumenti con il clarinetto basso di Bruno Parrinha, in un connubio che si sviluppa in tre episodi, a volte lenti, al volte in grovigli di note e suoni eterodossi che mantengono un loro logica.

È una situazione concentrata, quarantacinque minuti che scorrono lasciando intravedere l’energia che scorre sotto la superfice. Vittorio Loconte (Kathodik)

Recorded live at Desterro, Lisbon in May 2023, is another magisterial example of free minimal music from the Portuguese Masters. The music is very peaceful and tranquil, yet full of expression. The string instruments build a kind of background, on which the bass clarinet of Bruno Parrinha flows. The trio plays a suite in three movements, "I-III". As explained on Bandcamp: "La registrazione rigorosamente live a Lisbona al club Desterro di Lisbona, vede tre coraggiosi improvvisatori all'opera in una situazione cameristica e ricca di energia, derivante dall'intensità del dialogo fra tre strumentisti che hanno fatto dell'estemporaneità della creazione musicale la loro ragione di vita." I personally like the most the opening 19 minutes long "I", with a wonderful syntony and synergy of the string with the delicate lines of the bass clarinet. But the other tracks are also very touching. "II" is the most abstract track of the album.

Finally, "III" lasts 15 minutes and is a little less energetic, but more lyrical, like a free improvised ballad. Maciej Lewenstein

Working together in a variety of setting and ensembles--Variable Geometry Orchestra, Suspensao, groupings with Hernani Faustino & Jose Oliveira, with Michel Stawicki, and with Monsieur Trinite--the core trio of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Bruno Parrinha on bass clarinet and Joao Madeira on double bass, is heard in three studio improvisations of dark woods explorations. Squidco

Dans les Bois, Into The Wood, le bois du corps de de la contrebasse de João Madeira et l’alto d’Ernesto Rodrigues et de la nomenclature des clarinettes de Bruno Parrinha, tous les trois membres de cette nombreuse fratrie d’improvisateurs lisboètes dont Ernesto est un instigateur infatigable avec son label Creative Sources. Une musique de chambre raffinée et sauvage qui s’étale en I, II et III sur la durée de leurs improvisations. Sont à l’œuvre écoute mutuelle, suavité et une interaction toute en empathie, un sens de la construction cohérent et subtil dans un entrelac de traits, frottements, battements col legno, souffles discrets, envols et sinuosités. Une action d’un des protagonistes en entraîne une autre dans différents registres : en clair – obscur, crescendo soudain, murmure à peine audible, oscillation frénétique dans les aigus, grondement de la contrebasse, harmoniques, somnambulisme loquace de la clarinette basse, exacerbations, suavités, bruitages, dérapage sifflant, … Une efflorescence spontanée d’options sonores s’éparpillent ou se rejoignent, frisent le silence intégral et renaissent en grinçant, avec becquetées amorties de l’anche donnant naissance à un deuxième mouvement. Dans I, l’auditeur aboutit à quasi 19 minutes aussi bien tassées qu’atmosphériques. On croit connaître les évolutions – (d)ébats des Rodrigues, Oliveira et consorts parmi leur pléthorique production digitale. Mais leur savoir-faire renouvelle l’expérience avec la même passion et un changement de perspectives qui enrichit leur œuvre collective . D’ailleurs, c’est bien l’aspect collectif qui prédomine dans leur musique au plus près de l’éthique assumée des musiques improvisées plutôt que la mise en avant prépondérante des singularités de « solistes ». On ne saurait s’en passer, c’est très souvent l’excellence, la fraîcheur et un réel bonheur d’écoute. Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (Orynx)

 

There's Always Someone Who Says No

 CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 803, Lisbon 2024

There’s Always Someone Who Says No 

This live recording was made during a concert by VGO – Variable Geometry Orchestra that signaled the opening, in December of 2023, of an exhibition about the college student struggles against the Portuguese dictatorship in the years 1070-1974. The location was Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon, a concrete building where are secured most historic archives of the country, including those of the secret police, PIDE. The circumstance was very special. 
The political moment – the one of the exhibition itself; the polls indicating a rising of the extreme-right after the collapse of the Socialist Party government in a poorly explained and not convincing judicial case of corruption (it seemed like a coup); the problematic situation of the National Health Service, one of the most important conquests of the 1974 revolution; the tourist-capitalist gentrification, pushing populations and traditional commerce outside the oldest parts of the city; the war between Israel and Hamas, with the genocidal politics of the first – re-enacted the identity of improvised music. After all, this tendency was born in Europe in the final years of the Sixties, emerging from the midst of the student movement and assembling artists aligned with Trotzkyst, Maoist, Eurocommunist, Situationist and Anarchist convictions. 
At some point of the performance, Ernesto Rodrigues invited all the musicians to vocalize together and he, himself, repeated the phrase «This concert is dedicated to the people of Palestine». The left activism of the last years of Portuguese fascism was there musically reassumed and actualized, and that’s the first note to take from this public session. In a era of multiple bleaching in which many improvisers seem to forget the social and political foundations of what they play, it was of maximum significance to remember it. 
Why? Because the music was collective and collectivist, attempting to reconcile freedom of expression and semantics with an equal responsibility and presence of the individuals, with no hierarchies or orchestral suits, either methodologically or in terms of its signification. But Ernesto Rodrigues, the mentor of this ensemble of variable dimensions – in this circumstance with only 16 participants – did this adding an extra element: his gestural and maestro conduction. If in other VGO concerts the violist “directed” it with his own instrument, giving subtle signals to the others for changes of musical flows, this time he introduced the factor of “authority”, but deconstructing and subverting it in such a way that he was no longer conducting, but improvising the materials with the instrumentalists. Some didn’t follow him, or didn’t follow him immediately, but that was part of the game. To all effects, the title of the exhibition was “There’s Always Someone Who Says No”. 
It was a kind of metaphor of the acts of a student leader: in the dynamics of a political movement he´s no longer managing it, but learning/organizing the pulses and purposes of everyone, in order to have a fixed intention among unfixed performativities. What happened was a sonic mapping of desires, affections and enthusiasms. And of a spirit of revolt, dissent and defiance. When the status quo is of resignation and conformity, acting music as a struggle against was precious. Rui Eduardo Paes 

1. Conduction #50 - 30'57''

VARIABLE GEOMETRY ORCHESTRA

Ernesto Rodrigues - Conduction, Viola

Maria do Mar - Violin

Maria Radich - Voice

Miguel Mira - Cello

Anna Piosik - Trumpet

Bruno Parrinha - Alto Clarinet

Ziv Taubenfeld - Bass Clarinet

Nuno Torres -  Alto Saxophone

Tiago Varela - Melodica

Armando Pereira - Accordion

Guilherme Carmelo - Electric Guitar

Luisa Gonçalves - Piano

Carla Santana - Analog Synthesiser

Carlos Santos - Modular Synthesiser

José Oliveira - Percussion

Monsieur Trinité - Percussion, Objects

Recorded December 2023, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/there-s-always-someone-who-says-no

Reviews

One of the largest ensembles associated with Creative Sources, merging acoustic and electronic improvisers, this conduction by violist Ernesto Rodrigues at Torre Do Tombo in Lisbon in 2023 was the opening for an exhibition about the struggle of college students against the Portuguese dictatorship during the years 1970-74, leading to the Carnation Revolution. Squidco