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.
Mark Lewis & The Standards live in Vienna, October 2006
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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!
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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.
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!
.jpg)
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
A triple-CD of VGO ("Stills") has been recently released by Creative Sources.
photo: Vera Marmelo
Friday, September 28, 2007
Remote Control -
an exihibition at Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon
from 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:
Thursday, September 6, 2007
4x4 festival
Tromsø, 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 :-)
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 :-)
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Nuno Rebelo: guitar
Ulrich Mitzlaff: cello
Franziska Schroeder: sax
Pedro Rebelo: piano
Live 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.
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