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 

München

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS800, Lisbon 2023

1. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 1 - 1st movement - 09'48''

2. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 1 - 2nd movement - 04'58''

3. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 1 - 3rd movement - 09'00''

4. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 1 - 4th movement - 11'05''

5. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 2 - 1st movement - 05'55''

6. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 2 - 2nd movement - 12'01''

7. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 2 - 3rd movement - 08'22''

8. String Quartet Op. 230616 No. 2 - 4th movement - 15'01''

dis/con/sent

Dietrich Petzold - Violin, Tenor Violin, Clavichord & Bowed Metal

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola

Guilherme Rodrigues - Cello

Matthias Bauer - Double Bass

Recorded June 2023, Munich

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/m-nchen

Reviews

Classical music continues to be a significant fount for collaborations in this space, particularly for string groups, including various projects around Ernesto Rodrigues. Those (more often arco) string articulations can involve a variety of novel pairings as well (including with non-strings...), but what I've taken to calling the "jazz string quartet" (with double bass instead of a second violin) seems to be becoming an ongoing format (for a variety of musicians...). And it's been specifically ongoing for Berlin-Lisbon quartet Dis/con/sent (Dietrich Petzold, Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues & Matthias Bauer), now releasing its fifth album on Creative Sources, München (recorded there live this past June): While the program presents two substantial four-movement "string quartets" (complete with opus number being the recording date...), indeed suggesting a classical format, the brief accompanying materials emphasize the live & unedited (& uncut) nature of the performance. There's also a sort of aggressiveness (or at least novelty...) built into the sound of Dis/con/sent — whose first album was reviewed here in October 2018 — via extended technique, with Petzold especially bringing "bowed metal" (& clavichord & tenor violin here) & sometimes vocalizations, but those qualities (despite some solos...) are also increasingly bound to the flow of the quartet as a whole. Technique becomes in service to an overall sense of abstraction (per the post-Bartók quartet world...), i.e. to a classical sense of scope & form. (So this differs from e.g. more "anthropological" productions involving zoomimesis, etc. Rather there's a focus on new, but coherent ensemble textures around four string instruments — with various other inspirations being more subsumed.) And so München does follow a line of development for this quartet, the "digital" release Kühlspot Social Club (noted here in a December 2018 discussion around Ljubljana, that album being from the trio here minus bass...) appearing on the heels of Dis/con/sent, with Ulrichsberg (as mentioned in another mini-survey of string quartets involving Rodrigues around Fantasy Eight in August 2021...) & Kompositionen (as noted briefly for its turn to graphic scores in a different October 2022 review...) both being recorded in 2021. The trio with Petzold & the two Rodrigueses hasn't recorded since Ljubljana (May 2018), but had already released Sacred Noise (a double album, recorded in 2016) & Der Sturm (digital, 2017) as well.... (And then the first mention of Petzold here was actually with the quartet album Crane Cries in April 2018 — with the conventional two violins, so unusual for this space — while the most recent specific mention was with yet another "jazz" string quartet, again with the same underlying trio, but with Jan Roder on bass, Get your own picture reviewed in January 2020.... And for Bauer, the most recent mention was with the "trombone trio" Der Dritte Stand in July 2022....) That's a lot to relate (while still only mentioning strings albums, until the last that is...). But München does show considerable development around this format, especially via its more abstract collective idiom, presenting two instant compositions that would sustain LP-length albums by themselves. (One might then press a contrast with Lisbon String Trio, another long-running Rodrigues group, but crucially featuring guests — as well as often more of a world vibe, pace jazz per se, largely excised from Dis/con/sent at this point....) The result then involves variations in intensities, some scuffling in some moments, but also soaring passages of extended four-way flow, including via novel combos of harmonics, pizzicato, etc. (Varieties of harmonics are particularly creative at times....) Dramatic to open, continuing to glimpse broad vistas, München thus reaches for symphonic senses of abstraction & "completeness," i.e. for the world of the post-Beethoven string quartet (far more than it does for classic jazz...). And while it also involves some slack, it does mostly arrive: Regarding the "instant" part, there's far more expressivity & flow here than e.g. a typical classical quartet trying to work through a novel, through-composed score.... Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

A double opus of improvised String Quartets in four movements each, using impressive technique and exquisite pacing in this live recording captured at the Offene Ohren, in Munich, Germany, 2023 by Dietrich Petzold on violin, tenor violin, clavichord & bowed metal, Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello and Matthias Bauer on double bass. Squidco

Uncommon Statement

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 799, Lisbon 2023

1. Statement I - 29'56''

2. Statement II - 09'46''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola & Crackle Box

Fred Lonberg-Holm - Cello

André Hencleeday - Piano

José Oliveira - Percussion

Recorded October 2023, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/uncommon-statement

Reviews

Two unique string players--Lisbon's Ernesto Rodrigues on viola and Chicago's Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello--with pianist Andre Hencleeday and percussionist Jose Oliveira, in an exhilarating concert of dynamic free improvisation captured live in 2023 at Lisboa Incomum in Lisbon, presented as two "Statements", an apt description of their confident and declarative interplay. Squidco