Monday 30 March 2015, 8pm
Rodrigo Amado’s Motion Trio has become, in the last half decade, a pivotal and driving unit in Lisbon and Portugal’s forward thinking music community. A city and country whose musicians, in what contemporary jazz is concerned, have been marked by the work of the Clean Feed record label (which Amado helped create), its intertextual, open minded and aggregative group of local musicians (from rock, punk, song forms, et al) helping to create a miscegenation of vocabularies and livelihood pretty unparalleled in post-modern artistic gentrification.
This performance marks the first string of selected dates outside of Portugal for the Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio with the great American trumpet player, Peter Evans.
Rodrigo Amado / tenor saxophone
Peter Evans / trumpet
Miguel Mira / cello
Gabriel Ferrandini / drums
The Motion Trio, born and raised as a working band in and of itself, has historically been invested and accommodating to special collaborators. Steve Swell, Paul Dunmall and Jeb Bishop have preceded the outstanding Peter Evans, a trumpeter, composer, orchestrator and improviser of the highest order, who has made an indelible mark in contemporary jazz. His technique, vision and clarity of thought - from solo to his own bands (trio to octet), as well as his collaborations - have made it clear that he is not only pushing the very physical boundaries of his instrument, but of what jazz and new music can become; a creator of multiple, visionary avenues, only reachable to those who have the deepest understanding of the history of jazz and of the possibilities of musical sound expression.
2014 saw the release of two albums of the Motion Trio with Mr. Evans, both on the well respected Lithuanian imprint NoBusiness Records. ‘The Freedom Principle’ and ‘Live in Lisbon’, both recorded in Portugal’s main city, have been lauded internationally as key moments in the advancements of the most recent contemporary jazz and improvisation. Amado’s post-Rollins robust phrasing and Evans’ deconstruction of the possibilities of blowing, are sided in these two records by the outstanding rhythm section of Miguel Mira and Gabriel Ferrandini. Mira is a hydra of a cellist - he’s very much able to keep the time going the way it oughta, at the same time being always attuned to where the abyssal vortex of free music must lead to. Ferrandini is a monster on the drums; his notions of pulse, timbre, and his almost purely elemental awareness of where the music should be moving towards to, are proof of a rare orchestral notion of melody and harmony - as well as rhythm, of course - behind the kit.Amado, ever progressing in both tenor and alto saxophone, possesses gorgeous color, tone, and melodic clarity. His phrasing, always soulful and singular, has made him into one of the key new players in the European scene, having played with so many stateside and continental icons, from Joe McPhee, to Kent Kessler, to Chris Corsano or Taylor Ho Bynum.
Peter Evans is a trumpet player, and improvisor/composer based in New York City since 2003. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. His primary groups as a leader are the Peter Evans Ensemble and Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross and Max Jaffe). In addition, Evans has been performing and recording solo trumpet music since 2002 and is widely recognized as a leading voice in the field, having released several recordings over the past decade. He is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta) and is constantly experimenting and forming new configurations with like minded players. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively. He has worked with some of the leading figures in new music: John Zorn, Kassa Overall, Jim Black, Weasel Walter, Matana Roberts, Tyshawn Sorey, Levy Lorenzo, Nate Wooley, Steve Schick, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee and performs with both ICE and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011. 2016 saw the release of the highly acclaimed solo album "Lifeblood" and "Genesis", the third last record by the Peter Evans Quintet.
