Month: May 2023

words:Telma Mota (freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota

Last Saturday the second anniversary of Sonoscopy took place in Porto in its new home, now more spacious and pleasant, located at Rua Silva Porto. This association, which since the 1990s has been committed to boosting collective spaces and creating and presenting concerts, dedicated this anniversary event to experimental and improvised music for which interesting names in the field were invited.

The event started with Andrew Levine, currently residing in Hamburg. Levine presented an improvised set for a room still half filled, based on a curious set of instruments ranging from the theremin, one of the first electronic instruments completely controlled by dancing hands, a cracklebox, generating unusual sounds from 6 metallic buttons and a modular synthesizer, rich in producing inspiring tingles. Arlt, a pleasant surprise composed by Canadian Eloise Decazes and Frenchman Florian Caschera (known as Sing Sing) followed who presenting their most recent album Turnetable.This record challenges the romantic “French song” with experimental notes, almost circus-like sounds and pre-recorded folk musical pieces on nostalgic cassettes. Singing sweetly and captivatingly, the duo rocked the already crowded room with their charm and talent. They started the show with the melancholic 2012 song Tu m´as encore crevé un cheval and ended with two older themes Soleil enculé and the emotional De haut em bas. In between, the melodies of the new album following one another, enthusiastically accompanied on the guitar by Sing Sing and sprinkled with the noise of concertinas, the playing of plastic keyboards and the hum of other common objects that Eloise mixes so well with her naif voice.Arlt delighted the audience that aplauded and prolonged the moment with pleasure.

This was followed by a break for dinner kindly offered by the organization as an integral part of the Sonoscopic experience.

After this moment of tranquility and conviviality, thunder struck Marcia Bassett, a New Yorker who is a reference in the underground world presented a black collage, dense and rich in improvised sounds, accompanied by the Swiss Ursula Scherrer on the projections, created from fabric textures and leaves captured by a camera. Nestled on the floor, they enveloped people in an electronic sound whirlwind of influences, noise, drone and many more nameless odors. From an impressive modular synthesizer with fingerboard and pieces of nature, Marcia offered a total immersive experience full of restlessness.

Closing the anniversary Frantz Loriot (violin), Marina Tantanozi (flutes) and Philipp Eden (piano and objects) trio performed a free and elegant improvisation. The piano, full of soft murmurs and intense awakenings, accompanied by the flute where vigorous blows and full-bodied sound blows followed one another, all involved by a disturbing violin, now in tune, now intentionally irritated with reality. They massaged and scratched the instruments with affection and excitement in a conversation rich in phrases full of content.

A different day went by, calm and musically exciting, in a pleasantly homely and welcoming space.

A Double Solo of Songs and (double) Bass

words & photos: Raquel Pinheiro

To celebrate the 49th anniversary of 25 de Abril Aveiro’s section of Associação José Afonso (AJA) organized an intimate late afternoon concerto with singer-songwriter-double bassist Miguel Callaz.

I was unfamiliar with both Miguel Callaz and Banda Amizade a local cultural association and philharmonic band that dates at least from 1834. All I knew from have taken a look at and AJ’s advert was that it was going to be a double bass concert. The double bass being the electric bass older, acoustic brother the event was right up my alley. Nothing like venturing into the unknown to be pleasantly surprised in every way.

Double bass, like electric bass is not played, but felt. Many people play one or both, few feel it. Miguel Callaz feels it, lives it, breathes it. As he says “this instrument that, to me, has no beginning or ending.” Solo double bass can be thought as a boring, extremely academic performance without margin for emotions, for the soul filling human touch. Nothing of the sort was gifted to us.

Miguel Callaz presented a mix of his second solo album Contra: Contemporânea Tradição (Contra: Contemporary Tradition) of revised and transposed to double bass and voice as well as to a more modern language traditional songs from Beira Baixa and Trás-os-Montes, and a few, hand chosen songs from Portuguese singer-songwriters matching the occasion.

Traditional songs originally for voice or voice and adufe (a quadrangular or rectangular traditional Portuguese percussion instrument of Moorish origin) like Moda de São João, Senhora do Almortão, Moda de Ceifa, O Bento Airoso and others remaining easily recognizable, transmute and change with the beautiful artistry of Miguel’s playing and singing bringing them us in a new manner that retains their essence. The words, as is often, if not always, the case in traditional and folk songs, are of utmost importance “the hidden truths contained within traditional songs”. They are also timeless even if the stories told are from a mostly gone rural or manual labour world.

The singer-sonwriters chosen were José Afonso, born in Aveiro in 1929, whose song Grandola Vila Morena (not part of the concert reportoire) was one of the signals of the military coup of April’s 24th/25th 1974 that lead to the end of the dictatorship, a symbol the resistence, fight for freedom, usage of our traditional song books – he too sang Senhora do Almortão -, and one of our greatest artists; Sérgio Godinho /Que Força é Essa), José Mário Branco (Inquietação) with the double bass and the voice translating the restleness (inquietação), Fausto (Foi por Ela), Adriano Correia de Oliveira (Canção com Lágrimas). To tie the performance song half José Music (music) and traditional (lyrics) Tu Gitana – a XVI century song part of Elvas song book – that will be part of Miguel Callaz’s new album.

I saved the bass playing in itself for latter. Because, last is not least. And, in this particular case, truly not least. Without getting too tech bass geek, there is a uniqueness, a singularity, in Miguel’s playing. Drawing from jazz, masterly, but not eletistiscally, diving deep into our folklore to bring its rhythms, its flow to a way of multiusing the double bass. It is a marvel to look at Miguel’s hands as they finger, and pluck, and tap the body of the double bass and when the fingers pluck above the fingering hand down the fingerboard right there, close, close to the terminus of the fingerboard (on a bass/double bass finger or fretboard down is up and up is down).

However, after Miguel’s concert, the very end was a surprise by Banda Amizade’s band that came marching in and played a handful of upbeat tunes. What a lovely late afternoon!