“O Rodrigo Amado will take advantage of the natural resonance of the Igreja da Misericórdia, currently the Intercultural Dialogue Center of Leiria, and replicate the concert he gave in 2021 at the Igreja do Espírito Santo, in Caldas da Rainha, which gave rise to ‘Refraction Solo’, a album that has been acclaimed by specialized critics on a global scale”, explained to the Lusa agency Carlos Matos, responsible for Fade In, which organizes the cycle.
Closing the cycle, another charismatic name of national music is announced for November, Rafael Toral.
“The unavoidable Rafael Toral will come to Leiria to review ‘Sound Mind Sound Body’, one of his most emblematic and important works which, although it sounds completely current, is almost 30 years old”.
The third year of life of the Portuguese Exploratory Music Cycle means that “there is creative vitality and that it continues to make sense to give stage to artists and musicians whose aesthetics, by choice or by vocation, are often on the opposite side of the so-called ‘conventional music ‘”.
Fade In, which, among others, organizes the Extramuralhas festival in Leiria, recognizes that “this is not an event for the masses”.
But “it is important to continue working towards innovating and experimenting with new ways of communicating with sound and turning it into an ignition that inspires the development of other creative processes in the most diverse artistic areas”.
Spread over the Pena Church (in Leiria Castle), the Leiria Museum and the Leiria Intercultural Dialogue Center – Igreja da Misericórdia, the cycle “is a kind of continuous laboratory work that brings together many forms of art and that deliberately promotes the interaction between artists that goes far beyond the area of music”.
One of these forms of relationship is the project “Issuing Artists – Receiving Artists”, in which artists from different areas create original works of art based on the experience of attending each of the concerts. Afterwards, these works are presented in a collective exhibition at the end and gathered in a catalogue.
In addition to Rodrigo Amado opening on Saturday and Rafael Toral closing on November 11th, the cycle comprises eight more concerts: Tropa Macaca (May 20th), Vasco Alves (June 10th), Fuhrer Duhrer (June 24th) , Crossfade Memory (July 15th), Inês Malheiro (July 29th), Manuel Mota & Margarida Garcia (September 30th), Burgueses Famintos (October 14th) and Hedera 4tet (November 4th).
Carlos Matos highlights the debut of Hedera 4tet, “a quartet of violinists composed of David Magalhães Alves, Francisco Lima da Silva, Bernardo Aguiar and master Carlos Zíngaro”.
Among the names of signed credits is also guitarist Manuel Mota, who will be accompanied by Margarida Garcia, “bassist with a vast edited work, in which one can find an album in collaboration with Thurston Moore, from Sonic Youth”.
Of the emerging artists, highlight goes to Fuhrer Duhrer, “an unusual sonic pitch that Sara de Oliveira from Leiria has been developing in the field of handling cassettes and other objects”, and Inês Malheiro, who “will offer the public a reinterpretation of her fascinating album, ‘Goddess Nausea'”.
After three editions of the Portuguese Exploratory Music Cycle, the person responsible for Fade In highlights the vitality of this creative flow.
“Musical experimentation in Portugal is throbbing like never before. Perhaps the result of confinement, which provided time. There were those who took advantage of it to try to do something ‘out of the box’. And now we want to see these creations ‘outside the rooms’ where they were initially created “, concluded Carlos Matos.
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