When we find names like Luís Vicente, Carlos “Zíngaro”, Jasper Stadhouders and Vasco Trilla in the same band it is inevitable to think of something like “look, look, we have a little arrangement here”. But, in fact, what we think is that it is a disarrangement. A musical disarrangement. We can’t imagine what music might result from this combination of “free improvisation” figures. We can only guess that such different personalities will necessarily play something out of the box, and right out of the airtight and predefined box that improvised music has unfortunately become. Not that the musicians involved hadn’t already got used to playing in contexts that pulled the rug out from under their feet: Vicente’s association with Jari Marjamaki or Théo Ceccaldi, “Zíngaro” with Annette Peacock, Otomo Yoshihide, Voice Crack or Keiji Haino (there are more examples because his career is already quite long), Stadhouders’ with Marshall Allen or Peter Evans, and Trilla’s with Jamaaladeen Tacuma or Ferran Fages. In all these cases, they did different and they did new. The music moved forward, gained territory.

For these four now return to the unknown, the unpredictable. What anchors will emerge in their improvisations, knowing that they want these admittedly trans and post-idiomatic ones: those of free jazz, of classical music, of rock that may arise in the flow of ideas of these combined DNAs? Will the options go to a screaming, expressionist aesthetic, or to something more constructed, meticulous, cerebral and introspective, like “21st century chamber”? Anything could happen, this, the opposite of this, or something else. Vicente places himself in the middle of the oppositions defined in trumpet history by Kenny Wheeler and Lester Bowie. “Zingaro” has one Bela Bartok rib and another that leans toward the deconstructionism of Leroy Jenkins or, even more so, Ornette Coleman when he picked up the violin. Stadhouders usually acts between Sonny Sharrock and the guitars of the punk group The Ex. Trilla comes directly from black metal, but loves to work the skins and cymbals with totally abstract textures, putting rhythm aside. Yes, this concert will be a bewilderment. And just as well.

Rui Eduardo Paes