Busy weeks in NYC.
The past two weeks have been full of action!
I performed at the Local 269 , a place with a great vibe and aways full with musicians…the band was me, André, Frank LoCrasto, Ben Street and Adam Cruz. They kicked my ass!…it was a good gig, with all the NY factors: no sound check, no rehearsal, some technical difficulties…still was a great experience to play with these musicians and to hear my music with another interpretation!
Laurinda Alves, a Portuguese writer, journalist and blogger, is directing a TV series about Portuguese people in the world and André and I were interviewed for it. Laurinda and her crew spent one whole afternoon with us- we had a good time walking around Harlem, showing them around and talking about our life as Portuguese musicians in NYC.
I sang on Joe Philips and Edisa Week’s “Thomas Paine Dance Project- To Begin the World Again” at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. It was cool to be involved on a dance project with my voice. Joe’s music is very challenging: imagine to sing the same note , long notes, for 20 bars and keep the intonation…whenever I saw the dancers stretching all their bodies, legs, arms and twist, and fall, and jump it kind of made me want to be a dancer. So much freedom, yet so much discipline as well.
It was very interesting to hear the Q&A part after the performance. This is still a work in progress and what we presented was just one of four movements.
I had never heard of Thomas Paine (one of the Founding Fathers of the USA ) whose revoloutionary writings promoted independency, free thinking and argued against the institutionalized religion…all this in the 18th century. It made me curious to read one of his books.
It also brought the attention to me how it is important to explain artistic expression to the audience. There was so much engagement from the people who were there. They really wanted to question and talk about what they felt when watching the dancers and hearing the music.
I had a gig at Miles Cafe, the new venue on East 52nd Street, that was filmed by the International section of a Portuguese channel, RTPi. I will post it here when it is available on line.
Today I went to Brooklyn Recording to start my new project. It is such a great studio! Tomorrow I will be there the whole day recording with André Matos on guitar, Kris Davis on piano, Ben Street on bass and Ted Poor on drums. I’m really excited about this recording!!!!
That’s it for now!
These are the Times that try Men’s Souls
I am singing on this project, a collaboration between composer Joe Philips and choreographer Edisa Weeks. We will perform this coming Thursday and Friday, June 3rd and 4th, at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. It’s for free! To know more about this project click here.
To Begin The World Over Again explores the writings of Thomas Paine and his spirited advocacy for freedom and democracy. Fusing the vision of composer Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and his ensemble Numinous, and choreographer Edisa Weeks and her company Delirious Dances, To Begin The World Over Again explores: how are freedom and democracy packaged and promoted in America, what is the promise of America that Paine so fervently believed in and wrote about, and is America living up to it?
This coming Monday!
Please join us for one set of music at The Local 269! I’m thrilled to have these amazing musicians playing my music!
Vanguard
Yesterday I went to the Village Vanguard, my favorite jazz club in New York, to hear the Bill Frisell Trio. The trio featured violinists Eyvind Kang and drummer Rudy Royston. It was a great concert.
It felt like a cinematographic experience, where each tune connected to the following, in a very natural and spontaneous way. The trio sounded sometimes like an acoustic trio and simultaneously like a rock band in a huge stadium…the violin was not only a violin, the guitar was a whole world of sounds and ambiances and the drums completed the whole band concept. I couldn’t tell who was who- it was the complete symbiosis. No ego on stage, not distractions, just the music. I loved it.
Here’s a short video about the Vanguard…75 years of life, without interruptions. The Vanguard is really an incredible venue.
Gig with André and Thomas
Playing with André Matos (guitar) and Thomas Morgan (bass), at The Bar Next Door, last night, was really a great experience. Not only Thomas Morgan is an incredible musician, extremely focused on what is happening on the moment, but also the combination of him and André is a very special one. It makes my life so easy. The music flows very naturally, whether we’re playing an original of mine, a standard or a brazilian tune. We had a great audience, too.
Among the audience were many Japanese families who came to New York to join anti- nuclear rallies and demonstrations, for the United Nations conference on reviewing the performance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that started yesterday. The United States is expected to unveil long classified statistics about the total size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. On Sunday thousands of anti-nuclear activists rallied in New York calling for an abolition of nuclear weapons, from Times Square towards the United Nations building.
It was striking to meet these people at my gig. Living in New York is great because you always feel you’re at the center of the world, but sometimes it’s hard to know about everything that takes place, and to be connected with other things besides music. These people have travelled all the way from Japan to New York, just to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. There were 25.000 people rallying on Sunday. Some Hiroshima survivors are in town and demonstrated too. Isn’t this incredible?
Here’s a link to a Japanese newspaper that covered the event.
Anti Nuclear Demonstrators in New York City