tame the beast: concert in Brussels

After the Wordsong concert in Brussels i stayed there for a week at Ludo Engels flat. During this period we worked on a project of abstract electroacoustics, myself on piezzo microphones and feedbacks and Ludo processing my sounds with laptop. Dued to the unpredictable and wild nature of the sound material we work with, we called this project "tame the beast". On friday 14 of December we presented this project live at Compilothèque, a very charming club for experimental music in Brussels. We opened the night and our concert went very well. In the same night there were 3 more projects performing: Wrapped In (Giovanni di Domenico - keyboards; Lynn Cassiers - vocals), who did a magic and intimate concert; Os meus shorts (Nico Roig - guitar; Joachim Badenhorst - bassclarinet; João Lobo - drums), my favorites of the night; and Pan Pan, a trio who presented a very pleasant, joyfull and hillarious performance to close a perfect night. I was surprised and happy to meet the young and talented portuguese drummer João Lobo there. We had played before and we took this coincidence to play a short impro in duo also this same night at Compilotheque. A great pleasure!

2 concerts as guest musician of Wordsong

on the 8 of December, a Wordsong concert in Brussels at Palais des Beaux Arts, with me and Vitor Rua as guest musicians. Unfortunately, not much people in the audience... On the other hand, on the 21st of December at the main auditorium of Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, an enthusiastic audience almost filled this big concert hall for a great concert of Wordsong with not only me and Vitor Rua as guest musicians but also Lula Pena, Tó Trips, Flak, Gui and Tom Chant. Great night!

It will be what we make it

During 3 weeks, artists from different fields, theorists and programers have been working in Lisbon at the old building which will be the new space of Alkantara: cláudia jardim (portugal), pedro penim (portugal), nuno rebelo (portugal), gustavo ciríaco (brazil), tarek atoui (lebanon), carlos pez (spain/belgium), sasa asentic (serbia), federica porello (italy), estela lloves (spain), marc neelen (holand), ana dzokic (serbia/holand), bojana cvejic (serbia/belgium), mark deputter (belgium/portugal), catarina saraiva (portugal), raquel fernandes (portugal).

Check the blog of the project "it will be what we make it" at http://itwillbewhatwemakeit.wordpress.com for detailed info. The whole thing turned out to be focused around the space itself, the history of Alkantara and possible futures for it. There was a wide range of programming, from cinema showings to performances, from cooking to party, from video instalations to concerts, from debates to conferences, etc. I'll focus here on what i've done during this time.

On Friday 16 November I proposed the screening of Edgar Pêra's film "Evazion LX94", featuring Robert Anton Wilson, Rudy Rucker and Terence Mckenna, one of my favorite films ever.

I participated twice in the kitchen activities, together with Carlos Pez. First, on Friday 23 of November, we cooked for 30 people: us + our guests, invited to debate possible futures for Alkantara and this space.

The second occasion was Saturday 24 of November. The public was supposed to bring any kind of ingredients and we cooked non-stop since 19h30m to 23h, having presented a wide variety of delicious and spontaneous recipes (with the help of the volunteer girls from Alkantara who choped a lot of onion and also cooked some goodies).

This night was called "goodnight and good luck" and featured 2 performances by Sasa Asentic, a conference on alternative architecture by Marc Neelen and Anna Dzokic and a duo concert by myself (on electric guitar) and Tarek Atoui (on electronics).

On wednsday 28 of November, Federica Porello organized a Jam session with students from a few dance and performing arts schools in Lisbon. I invited Ricardo Freitas (bass guitar) and Miguel Cabral (homemade percussions) to join Tarek and myself on the musical side of the Jam.
“The Future is Uncertain” evening, on Friday 30 of November, presented three scenarios for possible futures of Alkantara. Scenario 1: venue - guide tour through Alkantara’s building in 2019, by Sasa Asentic and Pedro Penim. Scenario 2: project based organisation - with 7 timeframes from 2007 until 2019, by Bojana Cvejic and Gustavo Ciriaco. Scenario 3: platform for thinking - the press conference on 30 November 2019, the day when the building has been acquired from the city, by Ana Dzokic and Claudia Jardim. Then there was a documentary by Bojana Cvejic, Claudia Jardim and Federica Porello about Alkantara and Dancas na cidade; and a photographic research on more then 70 spaces in Lisbon used by Alkantara from 1993-2007, by Ana Dzokic, Marc Neelen and Pedro Penim.

After all this, i did a very short audio visual concert (about 5 minutes!) called "It will be a question of...". Using a piezzo microphone on a transparency projector, my hands and the objects that i was using to produce sound (and of course visuals) were projected on a wall. The end of it left a projection with question marks made with screws.

On this night there were also several video instalations, one of which, "It could have been tomorrow" by Carlos Pez, had my music as soundtrack. He used an electronic piece called "jumping birds", one of the "cristalized improvisations" that i composed back in 1990!

The last night, Saturday 1 of December, was called "Performing the space" and featured a very nice performance with the same name by Sasa Asentic and Gustavo Ciriaco, with the participation of Federica Porello, involving the audience and the space. There was also a great energetic and exciting solo concert by Tarek, and another solo concert by myself.

In this concert, also called "performing the space", i used objects that i found in the space and the space itself in order to produce sound. This was the core of my research during this period of 3 weeks, not only as performance material but also for video: i videotaped these and prepared some software in order to be able to play live music with video projections of the sound sources. This way, my concert had an acoustic first part (me playing the objects) and a video second part (me playing the clips of the ojects).




This night i put up again "It will be a question of...". Since the night before it didn't become interactive (people from the public using it to transform the images) cause it was the last thing presented, it was great to see people using it all the time during this second night. Once in a while, i would come back to it and redo some question marks.

Granular : : P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels, 3 and 4/11/2007)

João Martins, Ulrich Mitzlaff, Miguel Cabral, Ricardo Freitas, Emídio Buchinho, Nuno Rebelo

At Beaux Arts Horta Hall in Brussels, improvisations of music & dance. Granular is an association for the development of new music in Portugal, PARTS is one of the most famous dance schools in Europe. In this event, students from PARTS under the direction of David Zambrano presented 4 improvisation performances together with an ensemble of musicians from Granular (João Martins - sax and objects; Ulrich Mitzlaff - cello; Miguel Cabral - homemade percussions & electronics; Ricardo Freitas - acoustic bass; Emídio Buchinho - acoustic guitar; and myself on electric guitar and objects). Since David Zambrano asked specifically for music with grooves, we came with 4 pre-recorded sequences on computer that we could use anytime during the impros. This, together with my own gestures directing the musicians ensemble, provided a very lively music which everybody apreciated. We did well, very well indeed! And so did the dancers: nicholas tiishang aphane, salka ardal rosengren, jos baker, marcus baldemar, gilad ben ari, aron blom, fanny broyaux, young-seung choi, soo-jin chun, ludvig daae, stanislav dobak, frédérique dom, mikko hyvönen, anneleen keppens, thibault lac, cecilia lisa eliceche, dawid lorenc, steven michel, csaba molnar, sarah beth percival, eleni pierides, jonathan pranlas, guo rui, peter Þavel, maria silva, fanny skura, noé soulier, artemis stavridi artemis, marco torrice, anaïs van eycken, petra van gompel, stav yeini, elisa yvelin and of course David Zambrano.

Mark Tompkins in Lisbon

Mark was in Lisbon from the 18 to 28 of October. He stayed at my place and during this time we started working on a new creation: "Lulu" (Frank Wedekind's play adapted by Alban Berg for his opera, or the silent movie from Pabst, staring Louise Brooks). This musical choreography of Mark Tompkins will be premiered in the Fall of 2008 by his company I.D.A., with Mark singing live the different male characters. For the moment he's still searching the ideal actress / singer for the role of Lulu. I'll be doing the music and working on the songs together with Mark. During his staying in Lisbon we worked on 3 songs ("have you ever loved", "if not you" and "little lulu") and we are more than happy with the results. Click here to listen to a demo of one of the songs: have u ever loved in your life (Lulu)

Apart from this homework, we had some rehearsals with our band "Mark Lewis & The Standards" and we did 2 concerts in Lisbon: on the 24 October at Musicbox and on the 27 at Fábrica do Braço de Prata. Both were great gigs; personally, i prefered the warm athmosphere of the second one.

Emotional Blackmail Mark Lewis Standards
Colocado por monyque

Mark Lewis & The Standards live in Vienna, October 2006

live impro at Fábrica do Braço de Prata (Lisbon)

Fábrica do Braço de Prata is a great new venue in Lisbon: a huge building with 14 rooms for exihibitions, instalations, concerts, bookstore, bar & restaurant and... free parking place!!! On the 19th of October i played a free improv gig with Zé Bruno Parrinha (clarinet), Rodrigo Pinheiro (grand piano), Miguel Leiria Pereira(doublebass)& myself (electric guitar). Since Miguel is mostly a classic music doublebass player, the overall impro often took tonal directions, sometimes almost romantic, which in a way were a chalenge for the other musicians but at the same time provided a very pleasant athmosphere that the audience much apreciated.

Lost & Found live in Terrassa (Barcelona), 5 October 2007

Another gig of the duo "Lost & Found" in the context of Tensdansa Festival in Terrassa (near Barcelona). This duo with Mark Lewis Tompkins and myself started in June 2006. It’s a kind of pocket version of "Mark Lewis & The Standards". We play some of the songs of the Standards with different arrangements and we use videos that I did both as visual background and soundtrack. But we also did some original songs and later the Standards started to play these too. So it works both ways. So far, Lost & Found performed in Vienna, Ljubljana (Slovenia), Berlin, Girona (Spain), Paris and now in Terrassa (Spain). In April 2008 we will play in Toulouse (France).



After the gig in Terrassa I spend some very nice days in Barcelona with my wife Cathrin. We stayed at the flat of my friend Joan Saura. This charming flat at Carrer de la Plata, right in front of the port of Barcelona, was actually the first studio of Pablo Picasso in Barcelona!







Mark Tompkins is coming to Portugal this week to start working with me on his new creation - "Lulu" - for his dance company IDA. Taking this oportunity, we'll do a gig of Mark Lewis & The Standards on the 24th of October at Musicbox, Lisbon.

VGO concerts

VGO (variable Geometry Orchestra) is the largest improvisation ensemble in Portugal. Directed by Ernesto Rodrigues, it has been performing concerts with a line-up reaching sometimes 40 musicians! I played recently in the concerts at Fábrica do Braço de Prata in Lisbon (15 September) and Casa da Musica in Porto (12 October). Next saturday (20 October) one more gig at ZDB gallery, Lisbon.

A triple-CD of VGO ("Stills") has been recently released by Creative Sources.


photo: Vera Marmelo

Remote Control -an exihibition at Plataforma Revólver, Lisbonfrom 28 Sept. to 3 Nov.

Plataforma Revólver is an Art Gallery at Rua da Boavista, 84, 3º, Lisbon. "Remote Control" is an exihibition curated by Victor Pinto da Fonseca focusing on possible links between music and visual arts. Featured artists: Frederico Ferreira (w/ Blasted Mechanism), Antonio Olaio, Graça Sarsfield, Luis Alegre (w/ JANCL), Valdjiu, Pedro Tudela, Miguel Soares, João Fonte Santa and myself. My work consisted on the presentation of my videocompositions for mutant portuguese guitar. Here they are:

4x4 festivalTromsø, Norway, from 30 August to 2 Sept

This was my second time participating in 4x4, Tromsø (check january 2007 in this blog if you are interested in knowing more about last year 4x4 festival).
This is a multidisciplinary festival organised by Mariane Cosserat and Hege Pålsrud, involving musicians, visual artists, dancers, etc ... Each of us is supposed to present a solo work and also get involved in colaborations with the other artists. Like last year, we have the whole building of Tromsø Kunstvorening to set up instalations and events.

My solo work this year was a sound sculpture, "Self-Portrait with feet and head (mixed technique on mutant portuguese guitar, August 2007)".


The sound is a recording of myself playing solo the mutant portuguese guitar. My hands were made of plaster with the help of Hege and Nuno Olim. The shoes are just my own shoes. I did the video of my head this summer, with loops of my face in front and, in the background, shootings of my holidays with family and friends at the south coast of Portugal, as well as images of the party for the celebration of 50 years of happy marriage of my parents.
Apart from the instalation itself, there was each night a moment where i would move away my shoes, my plaster hands and the TV with my head, to start playing a 20 minute solo concert. The end of the concert was a dialogue between myself and my video head, which caused surprise and laughter in the audience






The other artists participating were Alda Snopek, who presented a magic 3D video projection evolving in very slow movements inside a big dark room. Alice Daquet, who shoted a short film in Tromso and presented it in a small cabin for 1 viewer at a time, soundtrack composed by herself. Amund Sveen, who built a tree with a huge number of hanging speakers, transmiting radio voices from different countries; Elisabeth Brun, who proposed a radio broadcast where artists and audience became the journalists themselves. Heine Røsdal Avdal, who made a landscape using moss and tiny little people; Yukiko, a japanese dancer who participated last year, was also with us: she is the wife of Heine and helped him setting up his landscape room; their son Leo (the spiderboy) was also around. Kristin Mellem proposed intimate concerts inside a tent. Laure Bonicel, dressed with vegetable elements and dancing in slow movements along the building. Liv Ragnhild Kjellman, who proposed a kind of talk show where people from the audience would tell about weird experiences of life. Nuno Olim, realtime drawing projected on a wall, most of the times interacting with people from the audience. And Torgeir Husevaag, who spend his time doing poker performances playing with the audience, his bets following some previous charts that he had been working on before.



Apart from the individual works, i got involved in a dynamic and short "4match" Portugal vs Norway performance, which was the opening of each night. The "match" teams were myself on bass guitar + Nuno Olim in video, versus Amund Sveen in percussions and Nicholas Horne (who was one of the guys from the technical team) on video.
Actually this concept comes from my friend Antonio Jorge Gonçalves, who came up with this idea during the Camp festival in Portugal, 2005. The 2 teams are facing each other, a white sheet is placed between them like a tennis net, the videos are projected there and seen from both sides. The audience is split in two, behind each team.

I also participated each night in two of the concerts proposed by Kristin Mellem at her tent. For this, I built a very nice instrument made out of streched strings between two walls. Together with the marvelous electronics of Ludo Engels (who was also the technical director of the festival) and the voice of Kristin, we did very quiet and introspective music for 15 minutes in each performance.

Then there were as well some small interactions sometimes with Laure, the vegetable woman; my favorite one was when i made some grass rain on her while she was dancing.

Each night ended with colective improvisation performance. The first night was quite energetic and cool, second night was too messy, third night was brilliant and everything seemed like having been previously choreographed, last night was sometimes confusing but still fine i guess. I was involved in these impros not only as a musician (using amplified objects) but also as a performer.

Thanx a lot to the production team: Andries, Gunnlaug, Kåre and of course Hege and Mariane. And Ludo and Nicholas for the technicalities!... Thanx to Bjørn for accomodating me.

yes, i had once more a great great time in Tromsø :-)

Nuno Rebelo: guitarUlrich Mitzlaff: celloFranziska Schroeder: saxPedro Rebelo: pianoLive at Goethe Institut, Lisbon, 20 July 2007

infortunately there wasn't much audience, but what a great concert it was! Franziska Schroeder is one of the most innovative and creative saxophone players from Germany. She lives in Belfast, where she works as researcher at the Sonic Arts Research Centre of Queens University ( Belfast) . Pedro Rebelo is the actual director of the Sonic Arts Research Centre of Queens University. He works in the field of electro-acoustic music with interactive concepts. It was the first time i played with these two musicians. As to Ulrich Mitzlaff, german cello player living in Portugal, i've been colaborating with him in many different projects in the past years.

Nuno Rebelo + Adriana Sá, live at Sources #1 Festival, Lisbon, 6 July 2007

Right after being free from the new 7 wonders, i had an improvised music gig in duo with Adriana Sá at Sources #1 festival, in Lisbon, on Friday 6 of July. This was the first festival organised by experimental music label Creative Sources. Because i was so busy, i couldn't see the other days of the festival, but the 2 concerts i've seen in the day we performed were really good: first it was António Chaparreiro (el. guitar) + Hernani Faustino (doublebass) + Travassos (circuit bending) + Miguel Bernardo (clarinet). Second gig was Eduardo Lala (trombone) + Gil Gonçalves (tuba) + João Pinto (laptop) + Plan (turntable). Our own concert felt great, Adriana played a prepared Zither that blended perfectly with my mutant portuguese guitar. We weren't afraid to have once in a while an harmonic aproach to the abstract sound material and it worked quite well. It wasn't the first time the 2 of us played together, since we played a couple of times together in the context of Ernesto Rodrigues "Variable Geometry Orchestra", but it was the first time in a smaller ensemble.

The new 7 wonders

The new 7 wonders of the world were chosen yesterday in a big event in Lisbon. I confess here that this kind of events don't mean anything to me. Nevertheless i was engaged to compose music for 4 films of 1'20" to promote Portugal in this context. One should be simphonic, another one urban, thrid one should be a nice pop and the last one should be electronic / thecnological. So i was quite busy the past weeks, writting a score for simphonic orquestra, recording it, and then creating 3 new music pieces out of it, within the characteristics that were asked.

The whole process wasn't easy the whole time, quite stressed (I finished the last piece two days ago...), but in the end the result was quite nice.

Mark Lewis & The Standards live in Uzès, France, 21 June 2006

On the 21th of June, Mark Tompkins performed his danse piece "Animal-mâle" at Uzès Danse Festival. Since the music in this piece is mainly songs from Mark Lewis & The Standards (yes, Mark Tompkins is Mark Lewis), the band was invited to do a concert later that night. So, Vitor Rua, Alex Cortez, Fred Ferreira and myself, we travelled to this very nice little town in the south of France. We found there a very nice and warm human athmosphere around the festival, nice people, a general happiness flowing in the air... I met some people i know from other places and other moments, like Tania Carvalho and Luis (portuguese dancers), Gaetan Boulourde and his wife Clara Villalobos (Gaetan is a bass player and a danser, Clara is a choreographer), Josette Pisani (from Marseille Objectif Danse), Laure Bonicel (who i worked with in Brussels and in Tromso), and of course Mark and his Animals.

The concert venue was very nice, a stage build in a horse training place. We played better than ever, it was indeed our very best concert so far! And the audience response couldn't be better. Little by little, people start abandoning their chairs to come closer to the stage and start to dance. By the end of the concert we had a bunch of people sweating and dancing wild in front of us. We had 3 encores and still being asked for more! It was fantastic!

Next day we saw a solo dance piece by Thomas Lehmen, called "Lehmen Lernt" which i liked a lot.

(to see videos of Mark Lewis & The Standards, check previous posts in this blog, there are 2 videos around on January and February 2007)

21 to 27 May 2007, residency in Tromso (Norway)

i was again in Tromso, in the north of Norway, for a week of residency together with the other artists that will participate in 4x4 festival over there in August. An intense schedule with presentations of each others work, workshops, improvisations, cooking and party!...

I was very happy to experience the 24h day without a single moment of night!...

Before returning to Lisbon i spend a couple of days in Oslo with my old friend Nuno Olim, who's living there since 2 years. He will be also one of the participants of the festival in August.

Turning Points 12, 13 & 14at CCCTV, Torres Vedrasfrom 19 to 30 of May

Yesterday was the opening of my instalation Turning Points 12, 13 & 14 at Cooperativa de Comunicação e Cultura, in Torres Vedras (Portugal).
This time i did it with 3 turntables and 10 drum cymbals. The sound result was very nice, with two of the turntables making a loop on 2 amplified cymbals each, while the middle turntable was playing randomly in 6 cymbals. This instalation will be presented untill the 30 of May, so if you are around, don't miss it!

This is the video of the previous presentations of Turning Points, using different sound sources each time:

Pocketbook of Lightninglive at Musicbox (Lisbon)16 of May

Pocketbook of lightning is the duo with myself on guitar and amplified objects + Marco Franco on drums and analog electronics. This gig in Musicbox last wednsday was very special, since we were being payed at the door and zero tickets were sold. In the audience there were 3 ladies that won the tickets in some radio contest, plus Ricardo Freitas (a friend of ours who had an invitation). The ladies went away a little bit after we started playing... we played a little bit more for our friend Ricardo. Then we stoped and chated for a while. Then To Trips and 3 friends of him arrived and asked if our gig was finished and we said "noooo, we'll play a second set for you guys".
You know what? i really enjoyed playing that night!

Separados Frutoslive at Pompidou Center, Paris (11, 12 May)+Lost & Foundlive at Rencontres Chorégrafiques, Bobigny(12, 13 May)

First of all, a word of advice to my fellow musicians: never travel with Easy Jet! They claim they are the fastest to deliver your luggage; it's true; but my new Gibson SG arrived in Paris with a big big crack in the body... shit!...

Anyway, while in Paris i split my time between reharsals and soundchecks at Pompidou center and then taking the subway to go to Bobigny (in the outskirts of Paris) to do the same thing for Lost & Found.

The two concerts of Separados Frutos (11 and 12 May) were realy great. We played very well and intensively, though in the second concert there were some problems with the sampler that stoped working for a while, but it was not serious stuff... we managed to deal with this situation by providing more musical material from the acoustic instruments and i believe no one noticed this short problem. Nevertheless, there wasn't much people in the audience... and playing in the big room of Pompidou Center for a small audience of around 70 people, each night, makes it difficult to warm up and feel the presence of the audience as an extra drive to enhance the energy that we put out when playing...

On saturday 12 of May, as i leave the Pompidou Center stage, i gotta run to Bobigny for my second gig that night. I start playing as soon as i arrive there and i had a great kick for this first concert of Lost & Found (a songs duo with Mark Tompkins
on vocals + my videos as background). I can't say the same about second concert of Lost & Found on sunday 13 May. I was more tired, i didn't have the adrenaline of the day before... But Mark felt better and prefered this second gig. The audience was great and very warm both days.

Nuno Rebelo + Katharina Franck,live at Akademie der Kunste, Berlin

After a few days rehearsing at Katharina's studio in Berlin, we opened the festival "Horspiel voche" (week of radio pieces) with our duo concert of spoken word on the 21st of April. "Nazaré, nicht der stadt, die frau" (see a previous post in March) was a big success. We performed at the big room of Akademie der Kunste and had a standing ovation from the audience. I believe there should be between 300 or 400 people, not bad! Katharina spoke her text with her expressive and soft voice, i played the mucis on the mutant portuguese guitar and amplified objects, with some background tapes. Since i had a "partition" with all the details i had to take care during the concert, this was the first concert in my life that i was obliged to wear glasses!

Here is a review: “And from time to time the radio also shows that it is capable of transgressing borders and offering something other than its usual pre-packaged productions. Nazaré – not the city, the woman, a radio play produced for BR, is transformed by its author Katharina Franck together with musician Nuno Rebelo into an acclaimed live performance, which pays tribute to host country Portugal with great narrative intensity.”
(Christian Deutschmann. FAZ, 4.27.07)

4x4 (part 1) in Brussels

Just arriving from Brussels after a refreshing week of creative contamination, together with Petter Goldstine, Christina Clar, Silvia Platzer, Frederic de Wilde, Mariane Cosserat, Norberto Llopis, Hege Palsrud, Laure Bonicel, Wendy Morris and Ludo Engels. Hopefully (if they get a subvention) there will be a part 2 of 4x4 in Brussels, in October, with 3 days of public performances and instalations. For the moment we were there just to meet and work together at Les Bains.
Here are my polaroids of the gang: