Rodrigo Pinheiro

RED Trio strikes again this time at Teatro Viriato in Viseu. This concert is part of the “Portugal Jazz – Festival Itinerante de Jazz” festival.

It’s been a while since we played, so I’m curious about the music we’ll make at the concert. Hernâni and Gabriel have been playing a lot with their other projects (with Nobu and Rodrigo Amado) so it’s natural that their improvisation language has changed.

Anyway, it’s relaxing to know that I’ll be playing a fine Steinway B211 piano.
By the way, check Hernâni and Gabriel latest CD’s:

• “Bendowa“, Nobuyasu Furuya Trio’s Bento, Clean Feed
• “Motion Trio”, Rodrigo Amado’s Motion Trio, European Echoes

The concert will take place at Teatro Viriato, October 7th at 22:00.

Next wednesday, 20th I will be playing duo with Nobuyasu Furuya at Trem Azul Jazz Store. The concert will take place at 19:30.

Next Saturday I’ll play at 22:300 with RED Trio again at Fabrica Braço de Prata.

Me playing with RED Trio at Rescaldo 2008. Foto by Nuno Martins.

The April’s Jazz.pt (a magazine devoted to jazz music at Portugal) edition featured a excellent critic by Rui Eduardo Pais of the concert RED trio gave at Rescaldo 2008. Jazz.pt has also a detailed Gabriel profile and biography. The text follows in portuguese (sorry):

[...]O primeiro a subir ao palco foi o Red Trio, uma escolha acertada dados os ecos que Rodrigo Pinheiro, Hernâni Faustino e Gabriel Ferrandini deixaram nos concertos realizados em 2008, esperando-se para este ano o primeiro disco da formação.

Com fama de “destroyers” num formato totalmente improvisado que vai beber à linguagem do jazz, os três músicos protagonizaram mais um momento notável do seu ainda curto trajecto, mas nestas circunstâncias ofertando-nos uma prestação feita de nuances e de uma abordagem mais virada para o pormenor do que para as explosões de energia que ficaram conotados.

Se a secção rítmica de Faustino e Ferrandini teve oportunidade de se afirmar como um poderoso motor de uma música orgânica e fluida, soube também agir em situações mais comedidas. Nestas, brilhou o excelente pianista que é Rodrigo Pinheiro, muito imaginativo, detendo-se frequentemente no interior do instrumento (preciosa, a sequência em que fez vibrar as cordas com um “ebow”, num “drone” discreto) e a todo o momento procurando ampliar as possiblidades do piano. Ora afirmativo, ora dedicando-se a um labor de tecelagem, a sua actuação adoptou estratégias e vocabulários da música contemporânea e integrou-as num léxico devedor a Thelonious Monk e Cecil Taylor, geométrico uma vezes, expressionista noutras, e a espaços líricos até. A forma como toca as notas agudas é uma imagem de marca do jovem músico, e mais uma vez o que fazia pareceu-nos vidro a partir-se.[...]

Last 30th January 2009 RED trio played once more time at Fabrica Braço de Prata. This was a special concert because it represented the trio’s first anniversary of the first concert that we have, exactly at the same place.

At Barcelos

I met Hernâni Faustino at an ad-hoc gig at Hot-Club in Lisboa where we played together on a septet directed by Ernesto Rodrigues. At the dinner I remember that we talked about the difficult it is to create a durable and strong musical project and the “porn star” syndrome all Portuguese musicians seam to have (I played with A, I played with B, I played with …). Well, at December 2007, I got an email from Hernâni inviting me to form a piano trio with Gabriel Ferrandini. I had played on lots of music project but I always desired to play with bass and drums. For me this formation represent the perfect balance between sound, timbre, melody, harmony and rhythm. So, It took me exactly 2 seconds to think about it and to reply yes to Hernâni.

We started working on creating the trios sound, avoiding to make it another piano trio, where the piano is the leading voice and the double bass and drums have a minor role. At the time we were all listening to other great piano trios like Sten Sandell’s trio with Paall Nilsen Love and Johan Berthling, a total free improvisation group; and the Necks, an australian piano trio more focused on creating drones and minimal atmosferic structures. That was the direction we were headed.

We played a lot 2008 in Portugal and we had a great time. We had great concerts at Barcelos (many thanks to the great Zoom guys), at Porto, Coimbra (we made the first part of Sonny Simmons trio TAGV at theatre and I got the chance to met the great Bobby Few! Btw you can download the concert we gave), Jazz.pt Festival at Hot-Club, two concerts at the unavoidable ZDB and two (or three…) at Fábrica Braço de Prata.

At July we had a three day residence at Moagem at Fundão a neighbour town form where I was born. We had three days to work fully on the trio sound and to record hours of music. I think these three days were fundamental because it allowed us to finally create OUR sound and we got enough recording material for our first recording that hopefully will be released this year.

Anyway, the concert at Fabrica unfortunately wasn’t that good because it started very late and we were a little tired. To start playing at 1:00 am (almost 2 hours late on schedule) on crowded place like Fábrica makes it difficult to get the necessary concentration levels improvised music requires. unfortunately, It seams that Fabrica Braço de Prata is shifting focus from more creative art forms to more conventional yet safe ones: a very usual fate here in Portugal.

Last year was hard for me with many changes on my life and lots of work. One of the most rewarding points I got was being able to play with the great guys Hernâni and Gabriel are and to see our music getting better every time we played together.

Hernâni, the double bassist from RED Trio is interviewed at Abitpixel by João Henriques. Hernâni talks about his background as a double bassist but most of the talk is about his another passion: photography.

It’s very interesting when one tries to relate his music production with his photography work because there is a very clear parallel. Concepts like motian, texture, light/timbre are clearly expressed by Hernâni both in his music and in his photos.

You can follow his work at his Olhares web site.

RED Trio will be playing at this year Rescaldo festival edition. The concert will take place this saturday at theatre “A Barraca” near Alcântara, Lisboa at 22:00.

At the same night there will be two concerts featuring Carlos Zíngaro and Nobuyasu Furya and One-Off.

More information at the Festival blog and mypsace.

Gabriel “O Incrível” Ferrandini, RED trio’s drummer was interviewed at Bodyspace.net website by Nuno Catarino. The interview is great and Gabriel talks about his projects, his influences and aspirations as a musician and drummer. Way to go, Gabriel!

I am thinking of starting a blog for a long time. I made some early (failed) attempts but the lack of time and motivation stopped me from updating the information at these blogs.

At the present moment I don’t have more free time (actually I have less time), but I realized that I was creating everywhere lots of information I could aggregate here. I’m posting daily lots of links do delicious.com, concert information at Last.fm, videos at Vimeo and Youtube and photos at Flickr. So this blog will serve as a hub to all this information I’m spreading on the internet.

I’ll use this blog to talk about my activities as a musician. I play the piano at several free improvised and Jazz groups at Lisboa. So I will use this blog to post news, information, photos and recordings.

I’m also a web developer and I’m passionate about technology. So I’ll use this blog to talk about the technologies I’m thrilled about and some of the projects I’m involved in.

I’m starting this blog in english even knowing that english is not my primary language (I’m from Portugal). So, it will be a way to practice my english writting. There will be for sure post in Portuguese, though.