The Squid's Ear Magazine


Lisbon String Trio / Luis Lopes: Isotropy (Creative Sources)

Isotropy - having a physical property which has the same value when measured in different directions - is the collaboration between the Lisbon String Trio of Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Miguel Mira (cello) and Alvaro Rosso (double bass) with Luis Lopes, here on acoustic guitar, in a 2 part extended improvisation recorded live at the 2020 Small Format Materials Festiva.
 

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Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Ernesto Rodrigues-viola

Miguel Mira-violoncello

Alvaro Rosso-double bass

Luis Lopes-acoustic guitar


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UPC: 5609063406627

Label: Creative Sources
Catalog ID: cs662
Squidco Product Code: 29485

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded live during the Small Format Materials Festival at Galeria Monumental, in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 7th 2020, by Carlos Santos.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Lisbon String Trio continues its recent trend of recording with more generally prominent Portuguese improvisers - as opposed to earlier albums featuring lesser known musicians - on Isotropy (their thirteenth album) with Luis Lopes on acoustic guitar, recorded in Lisbon in March 2020. I've mostly associated Lopes with more of a post-punk or post-alternative tradition, but his prior collaborations with Ernesto Rodrigues, Nepenthes hibrida (discussed here in June 2017) and Lithos (discussed June 2018) - both also featuring Vasco Trilla, as it happens - are if anything rather quiet.

A more subtle interaction maintains on Isotropy as well, with (as the title would appear to suggest...) the guitar occupying similar spaces as the strings and often interacting on their terms - in contrast to e.g. the more lively "concerto" style I'd noted most recently of Sediments (with Gabriel Ferrandini, as discussed in December - and indeed showing the more contrasting or dialogic style with which I'd just compared the recent Setubal, not actually by LST of course).

In its technical solidarity, perhaps Isotropy can then be compared to Theia, on which Zingaro's violin turns LST into a more usual sort of string quartet, but that's more an album of stark gestures than richly flowing counterpoint.... (The sense of intertwining polyphony from the middle of the texture might actually suggest some earlier trombone collaborations for LST, albeit here with a fully polyphonic instrument added.) So the sound of acoustic guitar is initially subtle here, but a pervasive influence does start to emerge, as guitar chords come to twist and invert string counterpoint at times, lending a sense of shifting perspectives to music that also evokes something of the "travelogue" style I've noted elsewhere. (The sense of "world vistas" also suggests K'Ampokol Che K'Aay for me, itself becoming something of a LST classic, but there with clarinet bringing shifting perspectives to different layers articulated by the strings, rather than seeming to absorb them....)

Some tight simultaneous pivots yield some amazing moments, particularly in the first track, as it often comes to suggest an orchestral scope, but Isotropy does also feel relatively short - making a big impression at times, as these improvised sessions sometimes do, but not forging a new vision: There's plenty of drama being invoked, though, and sometimes a sense of romance and tenderness. The shorter second track then opens around a more tentative guitar tune, even Asian-tinged, as it continues more of a collective focus on a main line - again articulated in varieties of pizzicato, etc. Its shifting perspectives do continue to yield an aura of pregnant mystery, though, amid a sense of continuing travels....

Isotropy is then both one of the most distinctive LST albums yet, and a new (for me anyway) stylistic tour-de-force for Lopes, showing great command of a variety of subtle ensemble textures."-Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts


Get additional information at Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Artist Biographies

"He has been playing the violin for 30 years and in that time has played all genres of music ranging from contemporary music to free jazz and improvised music, live and in the studio.

His main interest shifted towards contemporary improvised and composed music.

The relationship with his instruments is focused in sonic and textural elements.

Electronic music was an early influence on his approach to violin playing, which challenges traditional romantic concepts of the violin/viola through use of preparations and micro tuning.

Active in different settings on the Portuguese scene for free improvised music, both as a collaborator and in leading his own groups.

Music for Dance, Cinema, Video and Performance.

Has created the record label Creative Sources Recordings in 1999, which mainly concentrates on releasing experimental and electro-acoustic music."

-Creative Sources (http://creativesourcesrec.com/creative_artists.html)
11/29/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Born in 1958, studying guitar at the Academy of Music Amateurs, in the 70s, with Prof. Nagy. In the late 70 studying bass at the Hot Club, in the early '80s, with Prof. Zé Eduardo.

"Intrigue and permanent and persistent unease with stringed instruments, jazz and improvisation itself. During the last forty years, in concert, in private or in the studio, I had the honor of having played and learned (chronologically) Nuno Grande, Armindo Neves, Emilio Robalo, Celso Carvalho, António Ferro, Arthur Costa, Ze Bitch John Vinegar, John Lucas, Francisco Medina, Abdul moimeme, Rashiim Ausar Sahu, Patrick Brennan, Rodrigo Amado, Scott Fields, Francisco Trindade, Ernesto Rodrigues, Harvey Sorgen and Joe Giardullo.

Today, honor me play (and perpetuate my restlessness) with Rodrigo Amado, Abdul moimeme, John Lucas, Joseph Bruno Parrinha, John Parrinha, João Pedro Viegas, Alipio Carvalho Neto, Gabriel Ferrandini, Ernesto Rodrigues, Armando Gonçalves Pereira, Hernani Faustino, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Zé Lencastre, Louis Desirat, Peter Castello Lopes, Luís Lopes, Luís Vicente, Philip Sousa, Pedro Roxo, Johannes Krieger, George Lamprey, Marcello Maggi, Paulo Curado, Diogo Leal, D' Incise, Virginia and Eduardo Chagas. With some of my friends. I share my musical day in broader bands or ensembles, with other I highlight specific musical encounters and they are my entire curriculum." "

-JACC Records (http://www.jacc-records.com/en/musicians/miguel-mira)
11/29/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Alvaro Rosso is a Portuguese double bassist, a member of Variable Geometry Orchestra, ZMVR 4tet, Orgonite, Croniques 3, and String Theory.

-Squidco 11/29/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Averse to any linearity, the idiosyncratic Luís Lopes, a musician connected to Jazz, improvised and experimental music, has been building his career, a simple and singular story, characterised by a unique voice, free of corsets, formal ties or constraints and mannerisms regarding strict stilistical implications. He is an unfollower... experiments himself through paradoxes. Invokes teachings by following standards of subversion to any possibility of pre-established idea. Eminent self-subversion... Introspective timeless trance.

Running Multi-international groups, especially his Humanization 4tet (with Portuguese Rodrigo Amado and Texan's Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez), Lisbon Berlin Trio (with Germans Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann), and his "Noise" or "Love Song(s)" Solos, plus his highly recommended records he is growing as an international artist, playing at important Festivals and venues not just in Portugal but in Europe and U.S.

Coming from a rock/punk and blues background, while studying at local classic and rock schools, he began studying Jazz at Hot Club Portugal School and then was finalist at Escola de Jazz do Barreiro/Lisbon. Then did studies with Saxophonist Joe Giardullo who opened for him the doors of modern jazz harmony complexity through the George Russell's "Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization", plunging Lopes into the world of improvised and experimental music, without disregard for his fascination with distorion and guitar feedbacks, expressed in different incursions into noise music, while also canalizes energys towards projects where he can develop his composing abilities.

In more recent times, Lopes has played and / or recorded with different artists connected to jazz and improvised music, such as Noel Akchoté, Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann, Marco Von Orelly, Marc Unternahrer, Adam Lane, Igal Foni, Floros Floridis, Joe Giardulo, Harvey Sorgen, Benjamin Duboc, Phill Niblock, Ernesto Rodrigues, Paulo Curado, Sei Miguel, Rodrigo Amado, Hernâni Faustino, Gabriel Ferrandini, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Miguel Mira, Aaron Gonzalez, Stefan Gonzalez, Dennis Gonzalez, Elliot Levin, Alfred Hart, Daniel Levin, Reuben Radding, Daniel Carter, Jeb Bishop, Josh Abrams, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Samuel Blaser, Boris Hauf, Evan Parker, Olivier Benoit, Fred Lomberg-holm, Valentin Ceccaldi, Gonçalo Almeida, among many others."

-Luis Lopes Website (http://www.luislopes.pt/?page_id=972)
11/29/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Untitled 26:52

2. Untitled 12:12

Related Categories of Interest:


Creative Sources
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Stringed Instruments
Trio Recordings
Quartet Recordings
Guitarists, &c.
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
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