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)