AMM Photos byChristina Marx
About mid-way through AMM’s second set of the evening at Berlin’s Exploratorium, my mind wandered to the street that I lived on in central N.J. for thirteen years. When I moved in, the street was lush with majestic oaks and maples. Then, over the years, the large shade trees began disappearing. Some because of age,…
8/11/2019, Lisbon
The final day of Jazz em Agosto and I found myself on a plane at 6:40 a.m. heading towards Frankfurt. There was a family event to attend and so I bid my adieus the night before and lamented the fact that I’d be missing the closing shows.
I was particularly interested in catching the trio of guitarists Han-earl Park, Nick …
8/10/2019, Lisbon
Sometimes a little context can go a long way. On Friday afternoon, I took the 15 Tram to the neighborhood of Belem. Located about where the Tagus river (on which Lisbon sits) meets the Atlantic Ocean, it is home to several sights, including the 16th century river fortress Torre de Belem, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos monume…
August 9, 2019, Lisbon
At yesterday’s concert with percussionists Joey Baron and Robyn Schulkowsky, Schulkowsky made probably the simplest and most direct statement on the theme of resistance so far. Dedicating a song to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who quietly stood for her dignity and human rights when she refused to move to the back of a …
Jazz em Agosto ad at a tram stop
August 8, 2019, Lisbon.
Explosive. Before the french power trio ABACAXI (Portugese for Pineapple) even began, therewas a threateningly loud hum. Then with a strum of the guitar, thud of the bass, and powerful pound of the drums, Julien Desprez, Jean François Riffaud, andMax Andrzejewski began their assault…
August 4, 2019, Lisbon
Day four ofJazz em Agosto began earlier than the others nights with a free to the public concert by Lisbon based guitarist Abdul Moimême. Actually, to say Moimême plays a guitar is a stretch of the definition of ‘plays’ … there is a a guitar, actually two, but they are laid out on two tables and covered with large …
ByPaul Acquaro
Aug 3, 2019, Lisbon
I am convinced that the best way to see a city is to orient yourself towards one of its remaining record stores and walk. Take your time, don’t worry, they open late and hardly at the hour Google Maps indicates, so get sidetracked. I started at my hotel and headed out, and along the way discovered a par…
August 2, 2019, Lisbon
Brilliant blue, in the mid-20s (80 F), with a light breeze, the weather could not have been more inviting for a long walk through the jumbled city, and so I begin the day with an exploration of the Gulbenkian grounds. Back when I began my undergraduate work in the early 90s, I thought I would become a landscape arc…
August 1, 2019, Lisbon.
There could not have been a more apropos artist opening this years “Resistance”-themed Jazz em Agosto festival than Marc Ribot. His latest album, Songs of Resistance, is a self proclaimed soundtrack for the troubles of our times. For the album, the guitarist arranged songs from the American Civil Rights movement…
Since the blog will be heading to Jazz em Agostothis week and reporting back on the happenings, we thought we could seize the opportunity and over the next few days to document some of the music coming out of the fertile musical scene in Portugal. Today is a mixed bag of albums that have captured my attention, and tomorrow, coinciding with the f…
This is a fantastic album, and for nearly the past year it has been stuck in rotation on my playlist. Like the Nau Quartet’s 2017 recording, Fragments of Always, Lencastre’sEudimonia continues in sharing refined and exploratory musical vision with the help of the RED Trio’s pianistRodrigo Pinheiro and bassistHernâni Faustino, as well as …
What’s more a work of nature than Yosemite Valley? The iconic, and somewhat trampled, masterpiece is in a sense the heart and soul of the American National Park System. The pictures appears here on the cover of the group Nature Work’s self titled album and while it is a beyond my knowledge wether they just liked the picture or they feel a…
