Théatron by Suspensão

Live recording by Miguel Azguime on April 30th 2016 by at O’Culto da Ajuda.
Mix and master by Ernesto Rodrigues & Carlos Santos.
Graphic design by Carlos Santos.
Production by Ernesto Rodrigues.

REVIEWS

Débutant par un drone grave, Suspensão est un bel exemple du développement du son collectif en suspension ou en sustain si on veut se référer au travail de John Stevens avec le Spontaneous Music Ensemble ou Orchestra. Confer la toute récente compilation du Spontaneous Music Orchestra, Search and Reflect (Emanem 5216), où figure le fameux enregistrement de Sustain du SME + = SMO le 25 janvier 1975. À l’intérieur du mouvement des sons suspendus interviennent subrepticement des interjections et des improvisations éclatées bien calibrées qui cadrent parfaitement avec les drones. Le pianiste frappe une note grave en pressant sur la corde ou joue des notes isolées, le tromboniste articule avec empressement une ventilation bruissante, le saxophoniste amortit ses coups de langue sur le bord de l’anche et fait trembler la colonne d’air. De la trame globale se dégage un crescendo minutieux où les mains se libèrent, les sons éclatent sourdement ou l’alto d’Ernesto Rodrigues se faufile prestement en sourdine, empilant les harmoniques. De manière progressive avec quand même quelques à-coup tranchants, les musiciens font transiter le flux dans des climats variés, le décor évolue. Vers la moitié du parcours, l’orage menace, la fébrilité gagne les participants, le jeu est tendu. Du moins, l’attaque des instruments, cordes, piano, percussions, guitare suggère une violence sourde, rentrée, comme si la foudre allait éclater. Mais, au sein de cette bourrasque invisible, deux ou trois ou quatre des musiciens ont maintenu le drone, ces sons en suspension qui conservent une hauteur précise un long moment et dont les timbres et la texture évoluent insensiblement. Puis vient une lueur, le ciel se dégage et l’auditeur sent poindre un sentiment d’apaisement. Les instrumentistes volatiles se déposent successivement sur la trame. La symbiose au sein de l’ensemble se fait jour dans le détail sonore et l’affect partagé tacitement transparaît au fil des secondes, qui s’évanouissent par centaines, créant un flux vers l’infini. Une performance collective de haut vol fédérant des musiciens d’horizon divers. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Orynx)

In Gerald Murnane’s Barley Patch, he writes of a character who, listening to music in an old timber building, would hope to find “the crowd of dust-motes that he sometimes saw swirling or drifting in a shaft of sunlight.” As he listened to old records, “the movement of the specks” made him “think of energy held in check or of meaning waiting to be expressed. At any moment, the yellow motes might break out of the aimless-seeming formation and might arrange themselves far otherwise; might even comprise a set of signs requiring to be read.”

Théatron called this passage to mind, though instead of accompanying music, the swirling specks are the music itself: sound-motes held in suspension, loosely formed and in constant rearrangement, a set of transient signs hung delicately in the air. The 11-strong Suspensão ensemble deploys its numbers in the service of detail, rather than volume or density—an accumulation of details so fine, in fact, it’s hard to tell whether some are intentional or incidental. Each musician suspends a sound, holding it out into the space, and then another and another, sounds at times hanging in tandem, but all eventually dropping away to be replaced anew. It is music that feels too coherent to be improvised, but which you know could never have been composed.

The hourlong performance is the ninth “Suspensão” piece, continuing work developed on the 2011 double-album of the same name and 2015’s Jadis La Pluie Était Bleue. Dan Sorrells (The Free Jazz Collective)

“Théatron” e “Porto Covo” adaptam a fórmula para os elencos de 11 e oito elementos, respectivamente, que se apresentam como Suspensão. O mote está no nome, pois o foco vai para os tratamentos sustenidos ou suspensivos das notas. Ou melhor, para a produção de bordões (“drones”), ainda que sempre contrariados pela introdução no decorrer dos mesmos, regra geral de modo discreto, de pontilhismos – implicando que o grupo se constitua como a soma de dois. Um tem como função transportar-nos quase inconscientemente numa viagem, criando uma horizontalidade dirigida ao infinito, enquanto o outro nos desvia a audição activa para os detalhes, embora nunca determinando posições fixas para os músicos. Assim como a música muda sem que, à superfície, nada pareça acontecer, mudam também os papéis de quem a executa. Tensão e quietude conjugam-se de formas inusitadas, uma minando a outra. Deixamo-nos ir, mas nunca com uma sensação de conforto. Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)

Ernesto Rodrigues (Lisbon, August 29th 1959) has been playing the violin / viola for 50 years and in that time has played all genres of music ranging from contemporary music to free jazz and free improvisation, live and in the studio.
The relationship with his instruments is focused in sonic and
textural elements as well as the use of extended techniques.

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