Marcelo Dos Reis & Luís Vicente — (Un)Prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet (Cipsela)
The title nicely expresses the paradox of this music’s making. Guitarist Marcelo dos Reis and trumpeter Luís Vicente had been playing together in various settings for a dozen years before they made this record. That’s a whole lot of preparation for the moment at hand. On the other hand, only one of the album’s eight tracks, “Cornelia,” was composed prior to its performance, and a close listen reveals instant decisions in its transitions from forlorn ballad to agitated point-counterpoint and back again.
So, maybe it’s handy to find points of reference outside of the composition vs. improvisation continuum when making sense of this music. Each musician has a distinctive voice, one that builds on early experiences and identifiable influences, but also expresses their personal attitude towards the enterprise of making music. Alongside the rudimentary brass repertoire that any schooled player learns when coming up, there’s a lot of Don Cherry in Vicente’s moments of fragility, some Lester Bowie in his ability to shift between sound effects and straighter sounds, and the sort of robust presence that you’re bound to pick up if you’re not inclined to be blown off the stage when you play with roughnecks like John Dikeman and Onno Govaert, or elder eminences like William Parker and Hamid Drake. Since dos Reis came to freer music through an outward-bound rock, one can hear his comfort with the tonal reach and timbral variety conferred by amplification and electronic effects, as well as the sharpened attention to other musicians’ expressive details that comes from playing in chamber-improv ensembles.
This attunement is something that the two players share, and it comes into play again and again throughout (Un)Prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet. On “One Deer At A Car Window,” shivering, bowed guitar and whinnying, muted trumpet sway together, shifting infinitesimally closer, then pushing off from one another; these guys know how to have one another’s backs at the same time that they’re looking for their own way forward. They also share a respect for sturdy melodies, which they can plant and nurture in real time, as they do on the bold yet vulnerable “Grizzly Bear.” They don’t just play together; they speak a common language, fluently and accessibly.
Llegaron más libros y estos se van a ir con postales! Quién quiere y a dónde te lo mando? #DeQuetzales #Cipsela #libros #libro #book #postcards #postales #tarjetaspostales #tarjetapostal #bookshop #booksph #bookstagramer #escritor #writed (en Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico)
La improvisación libre tiene múltiples facetas. En la entrega 166 de HDO, se muestran algunas de ellas acudiendo a tres grabaciones publicadas en los últimos meses. En el programa suenan Enfances (Fou Records, 2016) de Daunik Lazro, Joëlle Léandre, George Lewis que se grabó en 1984, y que en parte había aparecido en el doble LP Sweet Zee (HatArt); Flowers (Cipsela Records, 2016) de Joe McPhee,…
