Festival Causa Efeito - Lisbon, Portugal, June 28 - July 1, 2023

The Free Jazz Collective 0

Throughout 2023, Lisbon’s NOVA University celebrates its 50th birthday with a wide range of activities, from exhibitions, conferences and debates dealing with current topics (gender equality, the challenges of chatGPT, sustainability, etc.) to a jazz festival aligned with the university’s research for the future. Pro-rector Clara Rowland, head of the festivities’ Cultural Program, approached Pedro Costa (Clean Feed) to assemble a program - aimed at the general audience, as well as international critics and curators - that might offer some clues about where jazz is heading in 2023.

The result was a four day festival - Causa Efeito - with a strong focus on Portuguese jazz, presenting some of the forward-thinking practitioners of the local scene, as well as some foreign artists with ties to the label, several of whom presented a brand new album. Would the event live up the university’s culture of innovation?

Wednesday June 28th

To kick things off in a proper way, a roundtable discussion (‘Jazz - que presente?’) was organized to focus on three general topics: the current state of jazz (is it dead and if not, what does it mean?), the act of publishing music in the early 21st century, and the presence of women in jazz. While the first two subjects offered some interesting insights into the many ways jazz can be approached, as well as some regional differences (Pedro Costa and singer Beatriz Nunes offering a Portuguese perspective, music critic Stewart Smith adding his two cents about the Scottish/UK scene, yours truly about Belgium), is was the third topic that led to the liveliest discussion.

Nunes, who besides her artistic practice is also an academic researcher, was well-prepared and armed with statistics about female presence - or more accurately: absence - in the field of jazz (festivals in particular), and made a passionate call for change. While the need for and importance of change was obvious for all involved, the tempo at which it can be made, was another matter. In any case, the past few years have seen a much-needed acceleration in some areas and more awareness overall, and while change at the very fundamentals (society as a whole, music education,...) takes time, it shouldn’t stop anyone from actually doing something. And the festival? Seven out of thirteen concerts featured women. 

Costa also tried to show that nowadays, jazz involves a broader range of instruments. Throughout the festival, less common instruments such as accordion, pedal steel guitar and feet (more about that later) would make an appearance, but the first one to make an impression was tubist Sérgio Carolino with his self-made lusophonein a beautiful room of an old college. Carolino is a major figure for his main instrument in Portugal, being the principal tuba player in the Porto Symphony Orchestra Casa da Música for over twenty years. He is also experienced as an improviser, appearing on Clean Feed since its earlier days, while in 2022 he released the solo album Below 0. 

 
The colossal lusophone ‘Lucifer’, designed by Carolino from different parts of old tuba models, and looking like a piece of futurist antique straight out of a China Miéville novel, has some relations in avant-garde jazz - think of Sam Rivers’ Tuba Trio with Joseph Daley or Peter Jacquemyn’s lower-brass celebration Fundament -, but perhaps also some connection to a guy like Colin Stetson, mainly because of the use of electronics/effects. Carolino started with a thunderous steamboat roar, to take you for a ride through an imaginative universe full of dolphin whistles and submarine sonar pulses. The effects occasionally sounded ambient-like, but suggested something far more iridescent.

While the first part of his program served as a fine taster, it was the longer second part that turned his brief 30 minute-performance into an excellent festival opener. In it, he moved from dense and urgent 70’s flick pumping (think: The Taking Of Pelham 123) with uncanny turntablist scratch sounds to something more minimalist, en route playing with trombone-like resonances and majestic calls announcing a new Battle of Helm’s Deep. While that all might sound grandiose-on-steroids, there was actually no macho posturing or miked-up braggadocio. On the contrary: Carolino slowed down, sang, slapped his gigantic bell, let his droney sounds dissolve until there was nothing but an eerie echo left. A consistent half hour that made a convincing case for the presence of the tuba in modern jazz.

*

The remainder of the concerts would be held in a modern auditorium that apparently is never used for concerts, but that despite its too large size became an excellent location for most of the festival concerts. The largest attended of them all was the one by Carlos Bica ‘Playing with Beethoven’ . The Portuguese bass player has been living in Berlin for years, but obviously has a large and loyal following in his home country. Understandably so, because the man’s stylistic range is as wide as his sound is impressive. While he first made a name for himself beside a variety of vocalists in the fields of fado and jazz (Maria João, Carlos Do Carmo, Camané, etc.), Bica was also one of the musicians that paved the way for the emergence of a new wave of Portuguese jazz that coincided with the founding of labels like Clean Feed and Creative Sources at the start of the millennium.

For his latest release, Bica surrounded himself with a stellar band, featuring saxophonist Daniel Erdmann, accordionist João Barradas and DJ Illvibe (Vincent von Schlippenbach, son of Alexander). Soon, it would become clear it was the kind of concert any festival would love to conclude its opening night with. It built on the enormous legacy of romantic composer Beethoven with imagination and intricacy, it was jazz with an unlikely combination of instruments, and it managed to combine adventurousness with accessibility. From the start, it avoided becoming a stodgy, overly serious affair, with transparent structures, a fine alternation of light-footed pieces and melancholy introspection, and moments of sheer beauty, spun from Erdmann’s juicy sound, Bica’s warm, wooden tone, Barradas’ subdued virtuosity and Illvibe’s role as the quartet’s wild card.

The music moved from the gracefully cinematic to the darkly propulsive, managed to groove without a drummer and to gently disintegrate with Illvibe as the ever-creative sound collagist. It jabbed with staccato movements and droned smoothly, merged serene chamber music with brief moments of Carl Stalling-lunacy. “Tiny Change” was a quirky reworking of Tom Waits’ “Small Change” and a bit later Barradas was given a solo spot for a magnificent work-out, “Für Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven”. The sweeping “Per Aspera Ad Astra” found the band at its closest to elegant classical music, while Illvibe’s solo piece was a colorful, layered masterstroke displaying an uncanny sense of timing and control. And if the tormented “Julie” was an unsparing punch in the gut, the closing “Lucky” was the ideal playful lullaby to send everybody into the Lisbon night. 

Thursday June 29th

Guitarist Luís Lopes has to be one of the most idiosyncratic proponents of Portuguese jazz, an undefinable phenomenon active in the wildest margins of improvised music (his feedback-drenched noise solos) or there where improvised music meets jazz, rock and the avant-garde. Few of his projects have that all-over-the-place quality of Abyss Mirrors, for which he raised a line-up that tickles the imagination. With Maria da Rocha (violin), Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Helena Espvall (cello), Bruno Parrinha and Yedo Gibson (saxes), Felipe Zenicola (electric bass), Jari Marjamäki and Travassos (electronics), Flak and himself (guitars), he assembled a tentet that feels like a walking contradiction, a clash of sound worlds, genres, backgrounds, personalities and temperaments. 

Their concert became that hard-to-define thing where improvisation and alienating sounds are constantly fighting over dominance, but never stop filling your mind with impressions. My little notebook contained almost six pages of scribbled text, most of it adjectives and exclamation marks, as the concert became an exercise in density and dynamics, the half circle of musicians constantly shape-shifting, sometimes with conduction by Lopes, into alternately feverish, chaotic and baffling areas. One moment, they almost reminded you of Miles Davis’ darkest fusion excesses, with Zenicola’s slithering bass pulsing like a throbbing wound. The next, they dove headfirst into contemporary avant-garde, with Lopes’ barbed-wire guitar an ultra-sensual extension of himself.

It was weird and angular, Gibson danced his peyote-infused dance as only he can, with a humongous heart and an irregular beat, simultaneously displaying that dazzling command over extended techniques, almost threatening with violence, while the electronics pair maintained an incessant subsonic rumble and mind-bending freakery, and Parrinha suddenly crying out emotionally, recalling the late Pharoah Sanders. The string trio served as a counterpoint foil in this psychotic see-saw, this convoluted fanfare that at its fiercest moments created a demonic intensity, a throbbing rumble with machine gun ra-ta-tats and shamanic howls. It became a kind of tribal folk trance that made you wonder where the hell it was going and if it didn’t go on for too long.

The band was spurred on by this friction. And perhaps it should be like that. Putting all the pieces of the puzzle into their right places and finding well-rounded closure would mean the death of this collective. Their damaged beauty or, perhaps more accurately, the beauty of their damage, is exactly what sets them apart, what baffles you and makes you feel as uncomfortable as some of them clearly felt by the end of their performance. Unease was at the heart of this concert, but despite all its labyrinthine excess, its denseness, its refusal to compromise and choose a clear direction, it became a trueevent, almost something to be complicit in as a witness. You get up and the ground below your feet turns wobbly. That kind of sensation.

*

The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Guy Peters 

Friday June 30th

Accordionist João Barradas has become one of the most impressive practitioners of the accordion, popping up in the widest variety of contexts, whether it’s classical, contemporary music or modern jazz. A decade ago, he already recorded an album with Sérgio Carolino, and after that he worked with a.o. Greg Osby, Belgium’s Fabrizio Cassol & Aka Moon, Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz, American trumpeter Peter Evans and recently also Carlos Bica. Check out the documentary CONTINUUM to learn more about this remarkable musician, whose command of the instrument, combined with a hunger for new experiences, turned him into one of the most lauded Portuguese musicians of his generation. He was actually supposed to play in duo with bass player Hugo Carvalhais, but at the last moment, this became a solo concert. 

Since it coincided with the release of Solo II - Live at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence , it was perhaps appropriate and an opportunity to show his skills as an improviser. Immediately, it became clear that Barradas wasn’t there to impress with lightning-fast virtuosity. You can find footage of him as a 12 year-old performing complex material at breakneck speed, but now he used chromatic and MIDI accordions to tell a much more personal story. The MIDI model enabled him to explore different sound registers, sometimes having more in common with a glockenspiel or pocket-sized carillon than an actual accordeon. What followed felt like a strikingly personal trip through the mental and musical space Barradas inhabits.

For each piece, he switched accordions (he brought three models), made use of various extended techniques and the possibilities of stereo sound. Both starkly repetitive/minimalist and lushly imagined, he betrayed an intensely personal relationship with his instrument(s). Whether it was dense and dark with a droning foundation or allowing more melody and color, you could never pinpoint him on any genre or influence. From classical masters to folk-infused strains to idiosyncratic artists like Pauline Oliveros, it’s somehow all there, and it makes you wonder how he would approach music by Clifton Chenier. Perhaps some other time. This set felt like a calling card, with the abstract meeting the concrete, showing you the unfamiliar (an accordion sounding like a Wurlitzer piano) or making the familiar (Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose” and Miles Davis’ “Solar”) entirely new. He’s that kind of guy and it makes you wonder what the hell he’ll be doing in, say, a decade or so.

*

Over the course of four albums, The Selva - Ricardo Jacinto (cello, electronics), Gonçalo Almeida (bass, electronics) and Nuno Morão (drums, percussion) - has grown into a powerful unit that effortlessly navigates between styles and atmospheres. Camar​ã​o​-​Girafa , their fourth and most recent album, is perhaps the peak of their exceptional chemistry so far, a relentless and ominous trip to a netherworld where form and freedom are kept in a tight balance. The trio delivered a performance of that album’s material, in chronological sequence. The exceptional sound quality and atmospheric lights only strengthened the overall experience. 

 
One of the many striking things about the band is that the members, despite their individual qualities as musicians, rarely opt for obvious displays of technical superiority. Imagination, control and exploration in depth are obviously more of a concern than technique, and so their music develops at its own pace, with three sculptors of sound completely attuned to each other, letting acoustic and electronic elements, the pure and the manipulated coexist. So what you get are eerie vibes, with growling, distorted effects, conjuring a stark ritualism that at some point had more in common with the grandeur of Swans and the direction of a festival like Roadburn, than one for improvised music. But it works, because the elements of freedom and discovery remain at the trio’s core.

They moved through a monochromatic landscape with melancholy nooks and thunderous peaks, alternated with massive Neu!-like motorik grooves, Eastern vibes and demonic chamber music. The interplay was alternately free and tight as hell, the band occasionally turning into a slightly deranged percussion trio, with Jacinto laying down the cello strings up, and switching back to a total trance, with manic intensity and metronome drumming for bobbing audience heads. The concert was nothing less than a masterclass in tension and release, and by the time they returned to more restrained territory for their final part, you’d become totally wrapped up by their heavy-but-intricate merger of fearless sound exploration and sweeping chamber-rock.

* 

Susana Santos Silva and Carlos Bica belong to different generations and perhaps also scenes. The past few years have witnessed Santos Silva expanding her range with a productivity to match, putting out albums with a.o. Fire! Orchestra, Fred Frith, Kaja Draksler, Child Of Illusion, as well as some solo music, totalling more than a dozen (!) releases in a year and a half. Those who have kept up with her, have probably also noticed that her music has only become bolder and more personal. Working with Anthony Braxton further confirmed the status of this exceptional trumpet player, who has become one of Portugal’s leading improvisers. Also during this duo with Bica, it took her just a few moments to impress with her sound and presence. She displayed her technique with aplomb, effortlessly switching from conventional to extended techniques and back, never losing sight of the flow of the music.

It also helped that the two musicians worked with a few compositions, or at least outlines used as a platform, that highlighted their personal strengths. Bica’s rootsy, transparent lines and impeccable sound never cease to impress and when he bows forward, intimately embracing the bass in that typical posture of his, you know you’re in for a lyrical, heartfelt treat, with often hymn-like elegance circling simple motifs. Bica didn’t shy away from muscularity - with the bow, he created some extraordinarily powerful moments - but never sounded like a loose cannon. Santos Silva reacted with control, invention and restraint, switching from dirty smears to unfettered beauty and back, occasionally even singing through the trumpet. And if you thought they were just following the muse, in a fingersnap they joined each other for a quick, explosive run. A beautiful concert that combined warmth and lyrical introspection with abstraction and fickleness.

*

The final concert of the day took place at the festival’s outdoor bar. The ideal location for trio MOVE, who dedicated their performance to the late Peter Brötzmann and did it in the only proper way: full blast. Like many of Brötzmann’s groups, MOVE could have naysayers accuse them of brutish violence and non-stop aggression, but that would be a one-sided view. The band consists of musicians that are way too committed to acts of freedom and spontaneity. Gibson’s control over extended techniques is just off the charts and within this band, he gets and demands the opportunity to use all the fluttering, quacks and impossibly shrill sounds he’s capable of. But of course there is also the hectic dancing, the manic physicality of his approach that is the result of his inner music, but also the presence of his colleagues.

In no time, drummer João Valinho has turned into one of the most visible and dependable voices of the Lisbon scene, with a dexterity that is matched by quick-fire responses and explosiveness. Put a guy like Felipe Zenicola next to him and you’re off for a combustible ride. Zenicola is a master of free playing, but must have roots in feverish rock & roll as well. His crawling lines are occasionally immensely heavy, as if coming from some living beast, with a sound that even reminds you of the late, crushing Harvey Milk, and always filled with a throbbing, dark funk. He could have been a member of Talking Heads, if they’d been raised on occult exorcisms. So what you get are ominous grooves, often with a cramping, convulsive unpredictability.

Valinho is capable of dropping sudden bombs, just like Steve Noble, Paal Nilssen-Love and Han Bennink can, but just as well deviates from the well-known path with concise accelerations and detours, never missing the mark where the three meet for one of those joint explosions. On soprano, Gibson used a fat vibrato that even reminded you of Sidney Bechet (albeit on a death trip), and when he used both soprano and tenor, of course it made you think of Roland Kirk. In this context, it became something exciting, a frenzied and overpowering mass of sound and energy. BAM!

Saturday July 1st

 During the roundtable discussion a few days earlier, mainly the negative side effects of codifying jazz were touched upon (it hinders progress, risks to become a conservative narrative for a conservative agenda, etc.), but if there’s one argument why you could turn it into a static thing, it’s jazz education. You can use it as a starting point, to explain, to make sure you’re all on the same page. The pedagogical concert by the Isabel Rato Quinteto aimed at an all ages audience and was a combination of performance and jazz history class. Singer/pianist Rato, vocalist João David Almeida, saxophone player João Capinha, bass player João Custódio and drummer Alexandre Alves did a good job of making an audience feel the joy, the challenges and unique character of jazz.

They did it in a chronological fashion, starting from its New Orleans roots with “Basin Street Blues”, talking about the blues and inviting the audience to sing along. An hour is of course too short to cover a century of evolution, so they mentioned some highlights from the first half century (Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, swing, Charlie Parker, bebop) to end up at free jazz and the civil rights movement, and finally making a brief jump to current Portuguese jazz. Stylistically, it diverged from the rest of the program, for obvious reasons, but it was a warm and entertaining concert that delivered what it was expected to: enthusiasm for (and some insight into) this endlessly fascinating genre.

*

It was a pity that not more people stuck around for the next concert, as it was another playful and creative addition to the program. One Small Step is the trio of bass player Roger Arntzen, Hardanger fiddle player/vocalist Vegar Vårdal and tap dancer (!) Janne Eraker. Now, the whole tap dancing thing may suggest a kind of old school, Cabaret-styled vibe, but it could hardly be further from the truth in this case. Combining spontaneously improvised music that is obviously rooted in Scandinavian folklore with imaginative dancing is perhaps not unique. But it is if the dancer you’re talking about is actually performing as a musician as well. You could already hear this on their 2022 album Gol Variations, but you need to see it take place in front of you to truly experience the band’s merger of music and tap dance.

All three musicians walked up barefoot, while Eraker started drawing circles with her foot on a little stage partly covered with sand. Vårdal used his fiddle in unconventional ways, while Arntzen applied clothespins to his strings and before you knew it, they were involved in a web of percussion that gradually gained more color, intensity and volume. If you closed your eyes, you were listening to a drummer with brushes. Perhaps even a guy like Han Bennink, because Eraker’s feet created the kind of swing, drive and sudden explosions the drummer is capable of. It was trance-like and exciting, the dancer kicking the floor while Vårdal joined her with uncanny throat sounds and dance moves and Arntzen laying down a nice groove.

Eraker amplified and modified her dancing in several ways, using a container of water, stepping on bubble wrap and switching to a pair of traditional tap dancing shoes for that old school sound. It was energetic, colorful, theatrical and a sight to behold. The best thing about it all, was that it also made sense in a musical way. You saw and heard three musicians performing, with the difference that one of them was also a dancer. An arresting performance, I’ve never really seen anything like it.

*

The combination of these two voices was something special. Oswald hammered away with undiminished intensity, acting as a kind of missing like between Keith Tippett and Charlemagne Palestine, with endless arpeggios, huge intervals and maximalist eruptions. It was a performance of huge contrasts, with two entirely different kinds of fierceness trying to find some common ground, Oswald letting the music rain down incessantly, like a great-granddaughter of Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor. And while it’s quite an event to witness a pianist with such a personality and preference for grandeur, there’s still the context to deal with. Put another musician of that temperament next to her and the music will be strangled in no time. With Zeuthen, the contrast in approach was quite fascinating, yet you couldn’t shed the impression that the performance could have used more oxygen and equilibrium.

* 

It was probably a good thing that the Luís Vicente Trio and Tony Malaby played a bit later at a different location (the outdoors bar), so you could empty your head first. Not that the final band of the festival wasn’t interesting. The trio already played a bunch of well-received concerts on the back of its album Chanting in the Name of (2021), which was perhaps a bit of a breakthrough for the leader, who usually works within the context of completely free improvised music and moved a bit closer to the fire music tradition with a handful of compositions that allowed for maximum freedom. With bass player Gonçalo Almeida and drummer Pedro Melo Alves, he uses two of the most versatile musicians of the scene, two personalities that can push both him and his compositions to another level. For this collaboration with Malaby, Vicente didn’t stick with the album material, but wrote some new compositions instead.

The addition of a saxophonist (on soprano and tenor) and the use of some swirling unison lines immediately took you back to the Ornette Coleman quartet and other similar bands, even though these guys also took the music in their own, vital direction. Apparently, they had to deal with bad sound on stage and it obviously bothered them. Nevertheless, the quartet played a strong set. Almeida was ultra-active, with a combination of determination and aggression, Melo Alves danced all over the place, occasionally even with irrepressible swing. Vicente and Malaby traded ideas back and forth, involved in call & response games, easily switching to jubilant lines when needed. It was loose and energetic, the ideal finale for a jazz festival that showed the genre is still doing fine in the early 21st century. You just need to know where to look for it. 

See: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4