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.

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.

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.

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.

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.[...]