A name we have been meeting more and more often in the flow of the movements that matter most in the interstices of jazz, improvisation, composition, looser rock and unheard proposals, Pedro Melo Alves joins ZDB to breathe new life into his cycle Conundrum started in 2018, continued in 2019 and since then on hiatus. In these two years, and against the backdrop of pandemic dormancy and speculative tension, Melo Alves has picked up the trail and has devised new forms and languages that had a particularly striking moment with the performance of his magnanimous Omniae Large Ensemble. Moving forward through 2022, Melo Alves returns to this personal mystery that is Conundrum, a wild proposal that puts the drummer in duo with someone he admires and with whom he has never performed before. The new cycle happens in February with Ece Canli, in April with Violeta Garcia, and in June with Odete. Without any previous plan or strategy, the silence is broken with a music born in an organic way and open to countless possibilities, glimpsing an infinite. BS

Without stopping at tighter universes, faithful to the impetus of this blissful quest for the inhospitable, Melo Alves invokes the presence of Ece Canli for this spiritual session. Artist, composer and researcher of Turkish origin, transferred to Oporto a few years ago, she uses her voice as a means for liminal states – here understood almost as a rite of passage – between the physicality of human nature in its most instinctive state and its continuous possibility of transcendence. Rising and falling, erecting and collapsing various heritages and geographies of chant, both secular and liturgical, to abstract meaning and create new symbologies – his and ours. Ceremonial, his music is conjured by means of advanced techniques, meta-linguistic lyrics, improvisation, and ancestral forms from various latitudes, abandoning any recognizable coordinates. Vox Flora, Vox Fauna of 2020, continues, for now, to mark all this path for posterity, joining a list of collective incarnations such as Live Low, Nooito and Cobra’Coral where his language is open to dialogue. Like tonight. BS