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!
Jenny added these pithy words on 