Good morning with our Middle of the Week Song – Wall Of Eyes by Smile. Have a nice day.
The Saxophones, AuditĆ³rio Francisco de Assis, Porto, 19.11.2023.
words: Paulo Carmona (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Paulo Carmona .
Recently, a lot has been talked about music as therapy. Sometimes more rightly, others less so. As everything else these days. In a deciduous Sunday, the moon already a companion., a few hundred people, among them myself, witnessed the confirmation of the preamble I’ve just mentioned by watching The Saxophones.
They started with Lamplighter, and right there the atmosphere changed in the blink of an eye.The music melodic smoothness soaked Francisco de Assis with a perfumed swing retro pop, capable to craddle de most attention sentinel of a fortification in danger. It is a very contagious and appeasing sound.
Alexis Erenkov is a very compente and compassionate baritone. He allows the music to and speaks for itself, that he only adorns with his frail, almost naive, verses, at times, here and there, accompanied by Alison Alderlice’s sweet voice.Alternating between saxophone and guitar, and a transverse flute in Boy Crazy, the songs, very aesthetically similar between themselves, appeared in a slow, rhythm, intimate sequence.
Alexis confesses this is the first tour he plays saxophone. The original idea was ever to do so, but times and wills change and it happened. I confess that, to my delight, they played If You’re On The Water on the encore. And right afterwards, as closing, In My Defence. I left satiefied and peaceful among a sea of happy glowing people. As is wished on an early Autumn Sunday evening. Turns out it seemed to had been therapeutic to everyone. All the better.
Laura Masotto – Dark Horse
Hi with Dark Horse by Laura Masotto. Have a good afternoon.
Amazing Songs & Other Delights # 54 The Ascend-Descend edition by Raquel Pinheiro
Amazing Songs & Other Delights #54 – The Ascend-Descend edition is tomorrow, Monday 20th, 3-4pm (gmt) on YĆ© YĆ© Radio:https://yeyeradio.com/ (or on the app).
The title refers to the flow of the very eclectic musical selection, comprasse of recent or just out instrumentals and songs, of this edition of the programme.
Tracklist:
01: Rafael Toral – Intro + Changes (except)
02: Cabrita – Todo Torto
03: Helado Negro – I Just Want To Wake Up With You
04: J. Masis – Canāt Believe Weāre Here
05: King John – The Water
06: Mary Timony – Dominoes
07: MOORIS – 04
08: O Gajo – CorrosĆ£o
09 – Swansea Sound – Paradise
10: The Lemonheads – Fear of Living 11: The Smile – Wall Of Eyes
12: Ty Segall -My Room
13: Vince Clarke – The Lamentations of Jeremiah
14: youbet – Carsick
15: Francisco Sassetti – Sara Is Happy
(image: M. C. Escher, Relativity)
Helado Negro – I Just Want To Wake Up With You
Hi aand Happy Sunday with I Just Want To Wake Up With You by Helado Negro.
The Lemonheads – Fear of Living
Good morning with Fear of Living by The Lemonheads. Have a nice weekend.
Francisco Sassetti | Wim Mertens – Misty Fest, Casa da MĆŗsica, Porto, 13.11.2023.
Warmness and Strife for Piano
words: Raquel Pinheiro; photos: Telma Mota
It was an evening of Wimtrasts and counterpoints. Warmness, homeness, romanticism, afable communication – Francisco Sassetti – sparcity, dislocation, strangeness, non verbal speak – Win Mertens.
Portugue pianist and composer premiered his debut album, Home, Monday night. Home is a beautiful record filled with intimate, personal, homely, sacred even, pieces. It is also imbued in melancholy, joy, longing, wonder.
Talkative, Francisco told small stories and contextulized every theme throughout his performance. Opening in a nightly mood, with Home’s two nocturnes, Nocturne I and Nocturne II, moving to the journeying title track that leads us home after absense.
The next three pieces Francisca’s Dream, Francisco’s Jr Theme, Sara is Happy are dedicated, respectively to his daughter, his son and his wife. A little girl with a Ballon, in a carrousel, a young boy slaying a dragon, and a wife, mother, woman litting a room with her happiness. The piano translates the stories magnificently. Or the vignettes are magnificently played, in a reverie, with intensity, upbeatness sorrow, glow.
Francisco Sassetti’s performance ends with the wonderful, slightly somber, but rich is tone and soul, Music For Her.
Wim Mertens, , accompanied by trumpeter Ward Hoornaert, presented Voice Of The Living his album homage to all war victims. Voice Of The Living was commissioned by the Chancellary of the Belgium prime minister as part of the commemoration og the Great War (Work War I, 1914-1918).
It is an harrowing musical piece. Playing in November, with all that is going on, two days after Armistice Day (November 11,1918), the day of the end of war it was created to signal, it is sobering, chilling, beautiful, uncomfortable.
Mertens way of playing, more minimal leaning, heighlights the theme of the composition. The Piano runs free, is sound pointllism, while the trumpet holds it filling the atmosphere with a certain joy, at times, verging on exuberant happyness, but never fully crossing into glaring bright light.
In Mertens Voice Of The Living we feel the sense of loss, of desorientation, the discomfort, the wasteland. There are also glimpses of hope, of a better time among uncertainty.
Libreto:
Francisco Sassetti:01 – Nocturne I; 02 – Nocturne II; 03 – Home; 04 – Goodbye; 05 – Filipa’s Dream; 06 – Francisco Jr.’s Theme; 07 – Sara Is Happy; 08 – InocĆŖncia II; 09 – Music for Her
Wim Mertens: 01 – Too good, too loose; 02 – Glossary raisonnĆ©; 03 – Escape and recapture; 04 – PondichĆ©ry; 05 – On the Zephyrous Peak; 06 – Continuous pushforwards; 07 – Nota notae; 08 – Watch!; 09 – Phaedra; 10 – Constance; 11 – Prudence; 12 – Far; 13 – Struggle for Pleasure; 14 – Close Cover
Jackson Harden – Doris Day
Good morning with our Middle of the Week Song – Doris Day by Jackson Harden. Have a nice day.
Johnny Jewel, Mouco, Porto, 11.11.2023.
words: Marcos Leal (edited and freely translated by Raquel Pinheiro); photos:Marcos Leal
Musician, composer, producer, visual artist are several of the sides multi-instrumentalist John David Padgett, aka Johnny Jewel, Other than his career as a musician in Glass Candy and Chromatics, and owner of record label Italians Do It Better, Jewel gained recognition through producing film soundtracks.
Jewel steps on stage and starts uncovering the black clothing that cover the keyboards and synthsisers with which he will play. Drive and Bronson are two of his best known cinema pieces. It is precisely cinema that fuels his solo debut European tour. As Jewel himself would say towards the end of the concert, an experimental trial tour to see how the audience perceives it.
Jewel shows his aesthetic attention by presenting himself in a classic red suit, face painted as shades of characters of films like A Clockwork Orange, that, commanding the synthsisers creates with total harmony and synchrony along the screened film images. Retro aesthetics, violence, sex, mystery, are marked characteristics of the cinema with which Jewel so well creates the atmosphere that leaves viewers immerse in the sound and image experience. The performance developed in a crescendo of intensity, interrupted by a false ending. When returning, Jewel took the opportunity to address the audience and play two more tracks, the last one the remarkable theme of project Desire – Under your Spell from the film Drive soundtrack. That is how the performance ends. With Johnny Jewel wrapping back the instruments in black clothing.
Andrea Burelli – Ali di Fuoco
Hi and good afternoon with Ali di Fuoco by Andrea Burelli.
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 