Rodrigo Pinheiro

This was a project we were planning for some time. The idea was to invite a musician we admire so we could shift our music and push our limits as musicians. We were invited to play at Culturgest at the “Isto é Jazz?” cycle (“is this Jazz?”) at Abril 2010 so we used this event as a landmark for the project.

We all choose John Butcher as the musician we would like to play. John is one of the leading figures in today’s free improvisation music and probably the most unique and cutting edge saxophonist playing today. His focus on sound exploration and his use of a wide range of extended techniques on the tenor and soprano saxophone was perfect to what we wanted to get on the quartet’s sound. So, we were very happy when John accepted out invitation.

The plan was to do several concerts in Portugal so we had to start booking them. We had JACC (thanks Pedro, Zé Miguel and Marcelo!) to help us on the logistics and specially on most of the bureaucracies involved when dealing with venues. We managed to book four concerts including the one at Culturgest, Lisboa (7th April) which was the first one. The next day we would play at Portalegre’s CAEP, the next day at Serralves at Porto and finally at Oeiras near Lisboa.

We also wanted to record a studio session. Ideally we should do this at the end of the tour but unfortunately because of calendar problems we had to do it at the beginning so we were afraid that this recording session would be like an “expensive rehearsal” as John said. During the session we had a hard time adapting to the extremely dry acoustics at the studio. The feeling was really strange as we were also trying to fit our playing to John’s music. Nevertheless the recordings were impressive and with really strong music.

All the concerts went really well and the public reaction was very positive and enthusiastic. Well, at Portalegre’s concert we were “competing” with a major football game (Liverpool vs Benfica) happening at the same time so we had very few people listening to us. Nevertheless this was one of my favorite concerts of the tour. On the other concerts we had always lots of public (Culturgest concert sold out). As the days passed playing and traveling around Portugal we got much closed as a quartet and this feeling kept growing till the last concert at Oeiras.

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On all the concerts I was lucky to always have very good pianos tuned before the concert. At Serralves I played an impressive Steinway model D. All the other venues had very good C series Yamaha‘s.

We had a great time with John and everything worked fine. Musically I’ve learn a lot from him and I think that this experience changed our music: we are even more focused on sound exploration and more further away from Jazz.

This quartet will play again at Imaxinasons on Vigo, Spain next 2th July and a new CD will eventually be released next year.

Last 11th March RED trio played for the first time outside Portugal.

This year Clean Feed was invited by Utrecht Jazz Fest to program a complete day and we were invited to play there. The concert also served as the formal presentation of our debut cd.

The concert took place at Rasa a venue with beautifull acoustics right at center of Utrecht. The first part of the concert was with the fantastic Who Trio, featuring Michel Wintsch on the piano, Gerry Hemingway on drums and Bänz Oester on bass. Their music is very quiet and calm so to have some contrast we decided to play a little louder and faster. Jason Stein also played solo at the festival at the same day, so we decided to invite him to play the last music with us. By the way, Jason’s concert solo was really impressive!

It was a very good concert and experience for all of us. If you understand dutch here is a review from the concert.

Finally and after a long wait RED trio’s debut CD at Clean Feed is out!

At July 2008 we where lucky to be able to do a three day residency at Moagem, Fundão. We played and recorded for hours and hours and the result was impressive: the trio got a new sound and we lots of recording sessions with extremely interesting material. At the end of the residency we had a concert.

Choosing the final tracks was a difficult task due to long hours of recordings we had. To fit all the music we enjoyed on 50 to 55 minutes was another difficult task because we had to eliminate several pieces we all enjoyed. After a long and democratic process we choose the following line up:

1. “Core”. Personally I think this is the best track. We were extremely concentrated and focused on a small set of ideas that we used and explored till the end. Lots of tension, dynamics and nervous music.
2. “Flat”: This one starts with a beautiful doublebass solo from Hernâni.
3. “Core, Flat”. The idea was to play something quiet with a ballad mood.
4. “Quick Sand”. All of us are trying to blend every instrument timbre with each other using lots of extended techniques. The dynamics during this track are extreme: from almost silence to pure noise.
5. “Time Wise”. On this one I decided to prepare the piano on a “John Cage” fashion using bolts, rubber, paper, etc. It is something I usually don’t do because once you have your piano prepared it’s very difficult to quickly return to a plain piano sound, especially on a concert. So normally I do prefer to modify the piano sound by placing stuff on the piano strings (instead of between the string) that I can easily place and remove while playing. But as we were recording and we had time we decided to try it. At the end Gabriel has a great solo.
6. “Burning Light”. A noise and short piece.

We mixed and mastered the album with Carlos Santos. It was a very complex and painstaking process because of several problems that happened during the recording: the piano microphones were placed to near from the piano sound board, so whenever I played louder there some minor but very annoying high pitch distortion problems with the mix. The sound captured by the doublebass microphone also was problematic. Anyway, only someone so patient as Carlos would be able to solve all of those problems.

The CD design is from Travassos. The CD features linear notes from Pandelis Karayorgis.

2009 was not a very good year for RED trio because we had very few concerts although all of us had lots project we were working on. So we decided to postpone the CD release to 2010.

Now that the CD is out we are all very proud and happy with the result. The first reactions and critics are very positive and we hope this is a starting point for something bigger for the trio.

You can buy the CD from Clean Feed, iTunes Store, Amazon or from me.

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.

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!