DESCARGA (320 Kbps)
As in previous years, the 14th edition of the Porta-Jazz Festival hosted the premiere of a commission to an emerging artist, this year’s choice being Vera Morais. This edition broadened the scope of the program by creating the Ensemble Mutante – a polymorphous group whose size and line-up adapt to the specific needs of each project. This album documents the first iteration of the ensemble (hopefully the first of many), and the result of an initiative aiming to create new repertoire, artistic residencies, performances and recordings.
- Porta-Jazz
***
“When the curtain rises, go hide
and wait until everybody leaves
you.
Come out and play.”
A handful of instruction pieces by Yoko Ono like this one – “Concert Piece”, written in the fall of 1963 – inspired the piece I conceptualized for this ensemble. Ono’s suggestion of hiding when the curtain rises and coming out to play only when we’re alone again is somewhat magical; more than a defiance of the concept of performance (encompassing the usual questions about it – why do we play, for whom, for what), it is an affirmation of the piece as a process, rather than a product.
“é apenas um pouco tarde” (“it is but a little late”) is an instruction piece built on the two sides of the curtain: the instructions (written during the residency week) serve both as guidelines for the performance (the front of the curtain), and as a kind of reminiscence of the whole composition process (the back of the curtain). Even though these instructions were written and organized sequentially by myself, their meaning is an ever-evolving, collective construction: seven months have passed and we’re still figuring out what “solo”, “unison”, “birds singing at dawn” or “a cycle of chords emerges” mean.
Besides Yoko Ono’s work, the poetry of Manuel António Pina also made its way into this piece: small fragments of his verses, as well as the title of his first book of poems – “Ainda não é o fim nem o princípio do mundo calma é apenas um pouco tarde” (“It is not yet the end nor the beginning of the world be still it is but a little late”), published in 1974 – are referenced throughout the piece and helped me in finding a name for it.
[download includes link for the video of the full performance at the Porta-Jazz festival]
lançado em 26 de setembro de 2024
Vera Morais - composition, voice
João Pedro Brandão - flute, alto saxophone
Hristo Goleminov - tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Inês Lopes - piano, toy piano
Aleksander Sever - vibraphone, percussion
Marco Luparia - drums, percussion
Recorded by Sérgio Valmont on February 4th 2024 at the 14th Festival Porta-Jazz (Teatro Rivoli), Porto
Mixed and mastered by Sérgio Valmont
Video by Mínima
Art and package by Maria Mónica
Tags
jazz contemporary music improvised music jazz porta-jazz Porto