After several sold out concerts, Piano Para Piano is back to Lisbon and will be performed for the first time in Porto. This show brings together on stage Rodrigo Leão and his daughter Rosa in a dialogue between two acoustic pianos.
Rodrigo Leão is the first to say that he is not a pianist, but the truth is that the piano has appeared in his work as a complement to the synthesizers that he has used many times to write memorable melodies and to think about the involving arrangements that he has given body to with the ensembles he has created. Now, the remarkable Portuguese composer is preparing for a new adventure: Piano Para Piano is a project that was born after a commission from the Piano Festival in Vila Nova de Cerveira, a challenge that led him to compose two new pieces that are also the beginning of a new path.
“I find it interesting”, reveals Rodrigo, “that I, who have no training as a pianist, can establish a dialogue with those who have studied and seriously study the instrument”. In this first moment in the event in Minho his interlocutor was Rosa, his daughter, who is 19 years old and who will also accompany her father in this show. It will be interesting to listen to these pieces as I hear them in my imagination. Imagination doesn’t have the same limits as my hands,” explains Rodrigo. “It can go as far as creativity dictates.
Piano Para Piano is therefore a journey into the wonderful unknown by one of Portugal’s most celebrated composers.
Tó Trips presents his latest album Popular Jaguar at Misty Fest. The guitarist and composer takes the stage in a trio format very well accompanied by Helena Espvall on cello and António Quintino on bass.
Tó Trips is, quite simply, an inescapable name in the multiple national music scene of the last three or maybe even four decades. He practised the glamorous side of rock in Lulu Blind and reinvented himself in one of the most original projects in popular Portuguese music, Dead Combo, which he shared with the late Pedro Gonçalves and with which he toured the world.
More recently he created Club Makumba, but he also knew how to dispense with company in order to project himself, on two records of absolute solo, in the solitude that you discover when next to you you only have a guitar. But this show caught him from another angle: with António Quintino on the double-bass and Helena Espvall on the cello. A string trio formed with two names that have travelled different terrains of the most adventurous jazz and improvised music that flank Tó Trips in his search for a highly evocative music, with dramatic thickness, quite poetic and frankly passionate. Popular Jaguar is the new record where all this world is revealed. On stage, the magic is even more intense.
Alan Sparhawk (of Low) integrates the line-up for the Misty Fest 2023 edition. After the disappearance of Mimi Parker, victim of illness, in November 2022, the American musician returns to the road with his singular musical vision unchanged.
On this tour, which marks Alan’s first concerts outside his hometown of Duluth since the death of his partner Mimi, the musician is accompanied by a band made up of his son Cyrus Sparhawk (bass), Owen Mahon (drums) and Dave Carroll from Trampled by Turtles (banjo).
Although Mimi Parker is still present in Alan’s mind and heart, the musician sees these concerts as a look to the future, which is why the entire repertoire is made up of new songs.
The guitarist and singer has released a solo guitar album in the past and his vast CV also includes collaborations with many different artists, proof of his versatility on the one hand and the respect he has always received from his peers on the other. And Alan Sparhawk (of Low) has signed such collaborations on discs by people as diverse as Ben Watt (Everything But The Girl) or the Swans, to give just a couple of examples. Now, in 2023, the artist from Duluth, Minnesota, presents a new chapter in his life and career in Portugal, maintaining the same mystique that has always distinguished his band, which has earned the highest praise from specialised critics throughout its existence.
The composer and pianist Francisco Sassetti presents his debut album with his own compositions. This solo work marks a new stage in his life, of which the connection to the piano has been part for 30 years, showing him also as a composer, opening the doors to a more intimate and secret side of his personality.
“In reality”, says the musician, “most of the themes are already about 10 years old. After my brother passed away in 2012, I started to compose compulsively, almost as if I wanted to continue his work, so tragically left halfway through. It was a form of lamentation and, also, a space of peace and silence. On the other hand, the demanding work as a concert performer and teacher (at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa and at the Orquestra Metropolitana, among other institutions) didn’t leave me much time to finish the compositions, which I managed to do”, reveals Francisco.
In fact, it was not only in his inner self that the disappearance of his brother Bernardo Sassetti left a huge void. This feeling of loss helps explain the contemplative and cinematic side of his pieces, very lyrical, which develop in a plot that sounds almost magical and is undoubtedly full of emotion. Themes like “Dawn”, “Home” or “Goodbye” let transpire the emotional weight that is entangled in the melodies that touch us on the deepest side. Sad but never gloomy, introspective and nostalgic, this music also vibrates with life and passion and affirms the name of Francisco Sassetti in the exciting panorama of the neo-classical scene.
Wim Mertens returns to Misty Fest with his new work Voice Of The Living, a tribute to all the victims of war, which was commissioned by the Chancellery of the Belgian Prime Minister as part of the commemoration of the Great War (1914 -’18).
Wim Mertens is one of the most emblematic figures of the most advanced contemporary music, an artist with a reference work that spans four decades of intense creativity, a composer with a discography as vast as it is rich, full of prizes, applause, and various distinctions.
Mertens began creating music in 1980, after working as a musicologist and radio producer. For Amusement Only, his first release, is a recording of electronic music that made exclusive use of the sound of pinball machines.
In these 40 years, Mertens has developed a varied musical language, writing for different instrumental ensembles, vocal compositions and even symphonic pieces. Today, his catalogue of recordings includes more than 70 albums.
