The freedom with which Maria da Rocha, a classically trained violinist, has approached her instrument of choice from an early age has allowed her to actively search, over more than two decades, for unique ways for her music to flourish. A tireless search, we say, either by the way she performs in her most diverse projects or by the search in different European capitals (Berlin and Stockholm, for example) for people and spaces that could take her further. This is how she met Maria W. Horn – who recently played at ZDB -, with whom she edited Pink (Creative Sources, 2015). In her own name, Maria da Rocha mixes this unique reading of the violin with a total openness to new forms, sensations and desires to create music that transforms itself at every moment.
This creative brio can be heard in Beetroot & Other Stories (Shhpuma, 2018) and, now, with nolastingname, the album she released in late 2021, at Holuzam, and that she presents tonight at ZDB. Fruit of a residence in Stockholm, where she was working in the mythical Elektronmusikstudion EMS studios, in 2019, Maria da Rocha spent that period experimenting with the violin and buchla, obtaining results far from her comfort zone. The maturation of ideas is remarkable in the 32-minute piece that was born from it, nolastingname is a constant game with space, opening and closing sonic dimensions in the blink of an eye, while playing with ideas of drones and proto-electro beats: which she herself sought, with the desire to invite Andreas Tilliander to master her album and enhance the bass of the sounds she recorded. Gestures wich define the freedom she feels to create and to take her compositions to other places, even those where she does not feel safe. The reward for the risk can be heard – and physically felt – in this magnificent piece.
Opening the evening will be funcionário, the musician from Setubal, half of Imperio Pacífico, exploring the territories between ambient/electronica/dance while winking at ideas from Jon Hassell’s fourth world. On stage, he will present some of the new themes he has been working on and that will be part of future editions. AS
