The Squid's Ear Magazine

Miguel, Sei

Esfingico - Suite for a Jazz Combo

Miguel, Sei: Esfingico - Suite for a Jazz Combo (Clean Feed)

A four part suite bridging compositional and improvisational music from Portugese pocket trumpeter Sei Miguel in a quintet including Rafael Toral on modulated electronics.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Sei Miguel-pocket trumpet, music score, direction

Fala Mariam-alto trombone

Rafael Toral-modulated resonance feedback circuit

Pedro Lourenco-bass guitar

Cesar Burago-timbales and small percussion


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




UPC: 5609063001709

Label: Clean Feed
Catalog ID: CF170
Squidco Product Code: 12669

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2010
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardstock Gatefold Sleeve
Recorded live at "Left", Lisbon, on the night of April 16th, 2006. Mixed and mastered by Rafael Toral at Noise Precision. Produced by Doctor No.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The international specialized press already presented Sei Miguel as the "best well kept secret" of the Portuguese creative music scene. It begins not to be true: the refined sound art of this idiosincratic trumpeter already circulates in the four corners of the world, and this puzzling but beautiful CD is another contribution to make him a wider justice.

Positioned in the fringes of the Lisbon jazz scene because of his very personal approach (John Cage being such an important reference to Sei Miguel as those of black jazz trompeters), we hear him in Esfíngico working with a classical music format, the suite. And we sure do feel each piece, or movement, as the part of a global compositional concept. Again with Sei Miguel we find Rafael Toral, more known and celebrated outside Portugal, specifically in the experimental and electronic music circuits, but always a confessed admiror of his fellow musician. The other members of the band are Miguel's usual partners: the very fluent Fala Mariam (alto trombone), the sober yet lyrical Pedro Lourenço (bass guitar), and the essentialist César Burago (percussion).

It's clear that the score was created for these performers and not for their instruments, like Duke Ellington did in his time. And that means this is music with an incredible human dimension, cooperative, participated and, most importantly, felt."-Clean Feed


Artist Biographies

"Plays his trumpet with complete awareness of the whole Jazz history while dealing, as a music director, with the full spectrum of sound sources in a broad range of innovative (and often strange) solutions, including frequent use of electronics. He has created his own music system, allowing him to take his open pieces to a high degree of perfection.

Director, arranger and trumpeter, Sei Miguel considers himself a simple jazzman, which, he says, isn't always easy. Born in 1961, Paris, lived in Brazil and France until settling down in Portugal during the 80's. Since 1986 he has been directing formations of variable geometry. Having performed in Portugal, Germany, Italy and Brazil, among his many regular collaborators are not only guitarists Rafael Toral and Manuel Mota, but also extraordinaire trombone player and painter Fala Mariam and virtuoso percussionist César Burago. Miguel has also written music for theater and ballet."

-Creative Sources (http://creativesourcesrec.com/creative_artists.html)
3/13/2024

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

"Born in Lisbon. Some academic training did not foster in her an interest for musical creation. In 1980, during a trip to the north of India, she intuited the sacred fire of true music, that she will find again in the more initiatic jazz and the gratifying discovery of several trombonists. Sei Miguel´s "sideman" since 1983, she partakes in all his works."

-Creative Sources (http://creativesourcesrec.com/creative_artists.html)
3/13/2024

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

"Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon, 1967 has been intrigued by the potential of sound and the functions of music since he was a teenager. As a composer and performer, he has been deeply involved with Rock, Ambient, Contemporary, Electronic and Free Jazz music in different periods of his life.

Working with electric guitar and electronics, in the 1990's he created a blend of Ambient and Rock and recorded acclaimed albums like Wave Field or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. By the early 2000's he arrived to a sense of accomplishment about his previous 15 years of work, also realizing the world needed a different creative response. He decided to start something new, as radically different from the previous phase as possible. In a transition to vulnerable action, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program in 2004, using experimental electronic instruments. It's been an ambitious long-term project exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through decision making and physical gesture, in a way inspired by post-free Jazz. The resulting music, "melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free - riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space", has been described as "a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers".

In the last 15 years he's been thinking and practicing an understanding of silence as "space", with a clear function in music creation but also as a metaphor for social relationships and a statement on information and sensory overload.

Performing solo or in numerous collaborations (including Jim O'Rourke, Jim Baker, Sei Miguel, Chris Corsano, John Edwards, Evan Parker, Tatsuya Nakatani, Manuel Mota, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham, Lee Ranaldo, C Spencer Yeh, and many others), he has been touring throughout Europe, Canada, USA, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

Also active in visual and spatial arts, Toral has produced video and several installations from 1994 to 2003.

In 2014 he relocated to the mountains in central Portugal for a more sustainable life. In 2017, having concluded the Space Program's recording series, Toral is entering a wider field with multiple directions and possibilities. From his mountain studio, he also offers mastering services."

-Rafael Toral Website (http://rafaeltoral.net/about/)
3/13/2024

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

"Pedro Lourenço is a Portuguese bassist, know for the group Bruxas/Cobras, Bernardo Devlin, and his work with trumpeter Sei Miguel."

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/1797634-Pedro-Louren%C3%A7o)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Indagacao 12:19

2. Amor 8:51

3. Passaros 4:43

4. Estas As Palavras 14:06

Related Categories of Interest:

Clean Feed

Improvised Music
Compositional Forms
Jazz
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Electronic Forms
Quintet Recordings
Electroacoustic Composition

Search for other titles on the label:
Clean Feed.


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