Yemanjazz

This adventure started in minor mode. Coltrane was the far away godfather that in the first instance put together some of the present musicians that later would create the group we here present: Yemanjazz. During 2004/2005 Pedro Castanheira conceived the project, creating original compositions and arrangings which resulted in a True Musical and Lyrical Creole of Cape Verdian Batucadas, Afro Cuban Mandinga, Brazilian Samba and Post Bop Horn Sections, with combined Italian, Cape Verdian Creole, Brazilian and French Lyrics. The variety of nationalities of the current formation further and continually enriches these Global Musical Vectorizations. In 2006, the group finds its form with the present musicians: guitar & piano & vocals & didgeridoo & flutes – Pedro Castanheira (PT); electric bass – Pietro Casella (PT/IT); double bass & percussion – Afonso Castanheira (PT); alto saxophone & percussion – Peter Bastiaan (NL); tenor saxophone – Francisco Andrade (PT/VN)); trumpet – Ricardo Pinto (PT); drums – Nuno Pessoa (PT); trumpet – Alexandre Andrade (PT/VN); trombone – Eduardo Lála; vibraphone, percussion & panela “sound system” – Ian Carlo Mendoza (MX). As the name suggests, there is a relation to the ocean’s motion and its inhabitants…Space is the place and that is where music plays its unifying role. The waves of the ocean connect the continents, as well as the sounds coming from these lands and that’s where Yemanjazz distils these influences in to its own painting and poetry. Yemanjazz profits from vernaculars of a variety of disciplines, some of them outside music like dance, poetry & performance. (text by Yemanjazz)

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Drumming

Drumming - Percussion group was founded in Oporto in 1999. The group has been synthesizing the evolution of erudite percussion in Portugal and in western culture. It has rapidly earned the public and the critic's sympathy and today it is a reference in the Portuguese musical life, performing in the main concert halls of Portugal: Centro Cultural de Belém, Gulbenkian Foundation, Culturgest, Teatro Camões, Teatro Rivoli, Teatro Nacional de S. João, Fundação de Serralves, etc., as well as in Spain, Belgian, France, Germany, Brazil, etc. Resident group for musical programming in Porto 2001 - European Cultural Capital, it has contributed to promote great contemporary plays, also creating its own repertoire, encouraging dozens of national and international composers to write plays for the group, exploring the most diversified, various and imaginative forms and ways of expressing percussion, earning progressively several publics in that area, which has never been heard before. Under the direction of Miquel Bernat, percussionist and pedagogue of international prestige, funding member of Ictus Ensemble from Brussels and collaborator of the Contemporary Dancing Company Rosas from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Drumming distinguishes itself for its singular programming, which sums up the experiences of the director's professional life, with the variety, diversity of styles and formation of its members. Drumming explores musical areas such as: contemporary music, rock-jazz-world Music, music for theatre scenes, opera and ballet dance. The group's activity goes also through collaboration with other groupings like the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Oporto National Orchestra, Remix Ensemble, Quarteto Montagnana and solo players like the singer Maria João or the violoncellist Ivan Moniguetti, among others. Drumming - percussion group tries to maintain a stylish and thematic coherency, going through sound innovation and the poetics of the musical show as a total and unique scenic moment. (text by Drumming)

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Discography

Ludovice Ensemble

Ludovice Ensemble is a Portuguese Early Music group focused on the research and performance of Baroque Chamber Music. It aims at a passionate and intense, but still stylistically accurate approach of varied repertoires, from French 17th century Ballet and Sacred Music, to German Sonatas and Italian Secular Cantatas. Their performances are inflamed by a Mediterranean-flavored sense of Drama and Rhetorical deliver, most appropriated to the Baroque cultural inheritance they revive. Created in 2004 by the harpsichord and organ player Miguel Jalôto and the traverso player Joana Amorim, the Ludovice Ensemble, besides its regular instrumental core (traverso, 1 or 2 violins, gamba or cello, harpsichord/organ) works regularly with guest extraordinary artists, like singers Orlanda Velez Isidro and Hugo Oliveira, and the French Baroque Dancer/Mime/Puppeteer Akiko Veaux. Ludovice Ensemble performed already in most of the major music festivals in Portugal, like "Festa da Música" - Lisbon (CCB), Mafra, Leiria, Alcobaça (Cistermusica), Loulé (Encontros de Música Antiga), Évora (Encontros do Espírito Santo), Baixo Alentejo (Terras sem Sombra), Viana do Castelo (Ciclo de Música Sacra) and many other concerts in cities like Lisbon (Calouste Gulbenkian Museum), Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia and Évora. The high scholar- and musicianship of Ludovice Ensemble performances is already recognized in Portuguese Musical Circle, and the group intends soon to present their work to a larger public, through CD recordings and concerts abroad. (adapted from text by Ludovice Ensemble)

blog (with audio recordings)

Quarteto Lopes-Graça

Quarteto Lopes-Graça was formed within the Lisbon National Conservatory School of Music and is created by musicians with outstanding solo and chamber careers, teachers of that institution: Luís Pacheco Cunha and Anne Victorino d'Almeida, violins; Isabel Pimentel, viola; Catherine Stryncks, cello. This project intends to bestow the Conservatory, likewise many of its fellow-schools in the world, with a reference group in the strings’ area, capable of developing a permanent teaching activity (quartet master-classes) as well as promoting the school, both in Portugal and abroad. The ensemble performed in Lisbon’s Centro Cultural de Belém as well as in the Festival “In search of a lost Concert House”, in Lisbon. It performed twice in “La Folle Journée” (Nantes, 2005 and 2006) and in many other venues around the anniversaries of Lopes-Graça and Mozart. It pays a very special attention to the repertoire by contemporary Portuguese composers, having given a few world premieres of such works. Its first CD includes major creations by Lopes-Graça and António Victorino d’Almeida. It privileges the staging of Portuguese composers' works, considering the relative wealth of international level creations for string quartet by composers such as Santos Pinto, Viana of Mota, Cláudio Carneiro, Luís de Freitas Branco, Frederico de Freitas, Joly Braga Santos, Fernando Lopes-Graça or the more recent António Victorino d’Almeida, Luís Tinoco, Amílcar Vasques Dias (work dedicated to this quartet). Nevertheless, it remains deeply involved in the rendering of the great classical works such as the ones created by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich. (adapted from text by Quarteto Lopes-Graça)

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Remix Ensemble

Remix Ensemble is Casa da Música's contemporary music group. Since its debut in 2000, it has already performed the world premières of sixty new works and a considerable range of contemporary music, covering all currents of style and idiom. In addition to its work on the concert platform, the group has made incursions into opera and music theatre, music accompanying films, dance and jazz. It has regularly invited featured composers to undertake workshops alongside performances of their works, including Emmanuel Nunes, Heiner Goebbels, James Dillon, Magnus Lindberg, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Harrison Birtwistle, Wolfgang Mitterer and Karin Rehnqvist. To date, the Remix Ensemble has been conducted by Stefan Asbury, Ilan Volkov, Kasper de Roo, Pierre-André Valade, Rolf Gupta, Jonathan Stockhammer, Jurjen Hempel, Matthias Pintscher, Franck Ollu, Reinbert de Leeuw, Diego Masson, Paul Hillier and Emilio Pomàrico, amongst others conductors. At international level, the Remix Ensemble performed in Paris (IRCAM, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord and L'Odeon), Strasbourg (Musica), Brussels (Ars Musica), Huddersfield, Rotterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Valence, Budapest, Orleans, Bourges, Reims, Norrköping and Vienna. The first double CD of music by the Remix Ensemble was released in 2004, containing live and studio recordings of works by Pauset, Azguime, Côrte-Real, Peixinho, Dillon, Staud and Nunes. New CDs with music by Emmanuel Nunes (Numérica), Bernhard Lang (Villa Concordia), Pinho Vargas (Numérica) and Wolfgang Mitterer (Casa da Música) are also available. In 2007/2008, Remix Ensemble performed several world premieres, including the first opera by Emmanuel Nunes and works by Miguel Azguime (with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), António Chagas-Rosa (with the Klangforum Wien), Johannes Maria Staud, Rebecca Saunders, David Horn, Georg Friedrich Haas, Vykintas Baltakas, Georges Aperghis, Jon Balke, Wolfgang Mitterer and Mauricio Sotelo. The Remix Ensemble is scheduled to play concerts at various international festivals during 2009: Madrid, Witten, Brussels, Huddersfield and Amsterdam. Peter Rundel is the Remix Ensemble's Chief Conductor. (text from Remix Ensemble's page at Casa da Música's website)

Vá-de-Viró

After 17 years of existence, many concerts done and 3 CDs edited, this group continues persistent, joyful and friendly on privileging the music from ethnic inspiration. The group elements are: Adriano St. Aubyn, Cláudia Matias, Gonçalo Pescada, Igor Martins, Jorge Semião, Maria do Rosário Arenga, Patrícia Martins, Paulo Cunha e Paulo Girão. To the old ethnic melodies and the adapted old lyrics, they add original melodies and lyrics witch enrich their vast repertoire. With no preconceptions, this group continues to experiment their many influences and interests, resulting from this mixture a sound that many call... "Vá-de-Viró". (text by Vá-de-Viró)

Vá-de-Viró's website