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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
A beautiful cardbox designed by Witold Oleszak
Includes unlimited streaming of The Caldas Concert. Live at Igreja do Espírito Santo
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
After six years organizing the Faroeste-EMCCI(1) series with Grémio Caldense, one thing that stood out for me in the portuguese improv scene is that it is all about encounters. Souls that rhizomatically meet and fall in love at random points of their paths, some more others less, creating special moments that get engraved in space and time, sometimes in records like this one.
It was november 2020, during the pandemic isolation period. It had become clear for us by then that making the effort for this rhizoma not to dry out and break was mandatory, even though it would mean organizing these encounters for an absent and invisible audience.
The drive to do this came from the radio project called EIRA, from our neighbors OSSO Colectivo, who curated several sound projects to be presented through this media. As a guest resident in this project, Grémio proposed during the first three editions, a series of concerts that disturbed the stillness our activity had so forcefully plunged into.
This concert was broadcasted the following month in the third edition of EIRA, locally in FM waves, and worldwide through the web. This and other solutions alike, devised to counter the abyss artists and other cultural agents were facing then, stressed the importance of the role promoters and curators play in the scene, not reducing their work as menu designers but more important as designers of structures, especially for such fragile ecosystems as is the one of exploratory art.
The moment that resulted in this recording was brought forward by the young and restless trumpet player from Lisbon João Almeida, who besides several encounters like this one, takes also part in other more settled projects and working bands like Peachfuzz, Chão Maior, Medusa Unit, Garfo and Hocus, his most recent solo electronic project on the no-input mixer. The musicians gathered for this occasion in Caldas da Rainha, need no presentation, being some of the most prolific in the free improv family in Portugal, Marcelo dos Reis (acoustic guitar), João Valinho (percussions), Alvaro Rosso (double bass), with a last minute call to catalan Albert Cirera (tenor and soprano).
In a fifty minute long continuous set, the highly percussive arpeggios of Dos Reis, the abrasive punctuation of Valinho’s minimal drum kit, the dronelike backbone of Rosso’s arch work, the haunting intervals and piercing sustains of Almeida’s pocket trumpet, the baroque and playful explorations of Cirera’s found objects, added to the compelling acoustics of Espírito Santo Church, where Grémio presented most of their proposals for the past four years, created, in a crescendo of tensions and intersections, silences and mayhem, this beautiful chamber moment that could perfectly summarize and illustrate the awe we were all experiencing then, in one of the most unreal moments of our recent history.
Ricardo Pimentel
Curator and technical director at Grémio Caldense
(1) Faroeste - Encontro de Música de Câmara Contemporânea e Improvisada
credits
released October 7, 2022
Marcelo dos Reis - guitar, prepared guitar
Álvaro Rosso - double bass
João Valinho - percussion
Albert Cirera - saxophone
João Almeida - trumpet
Cover Design by Witold Oleszak.
Executive Production by Tomasz Konwent & Andrzej Nowak.
Recorded live in concert by Ricardo Pimentel on 14th November 2020 at Grémio Caldense / Igreja do Espírito Santo - Caldas da Rainha.
Mix and Master by Marcelo dos Reis.
Photo by Susana Valadas.
All music by Marcelo dos Reis, João Almeida, Álvaro Rosso, João Valinho and Albert Cirera.
Special thanks to Andrzej Nowak, Ricardo Pimentel, Susana Valadas, Nayara Siler, Grémio Caldense, Pawel Doskocz and Tomasz Konwent.
supported by 14 fans who also own “The Caldas Concert. Live at Igreja do Espírito Santo”
The textures! It's like a string quartet, only better. Such an achievement to get the percussive guitar & piano to engage with the strings. Andrew Webb
The Hein Weingard Trio mix free improvisation and controlled composition, making music for avant-garde jazz adventurers. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 10, 2023
