Audio

Produced by  Sei Miguel Portugal continues to represent a very interesting sound source for all of us who share a passion for improvisation at high level. Sei Miguel is a trumpet player whose phrasing is never dull; his melodic fragmentation is always oriented towards ways of escaping the obvious. Here, he's flanked by extremely collaborative companions, two guitarists (one of them is Manuel Mota, who released a couple of CDs on this very label), a trombone and percussion. This music is absolutely engaging and always on the verge, promising something that never completely manifests itself...but the excitement comes right there, in the waiting. The muted trumpet of the leader shines throughout this rewarding listening. Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, 2003 Sei Miguel is a composer, trumpeter and all round experimental jazzman, born in Paris but now living in Portugal. Still Alive in Bairro Alto presents one long piece, performed live and just over forty minutes in length, featuring contributions by a host of performers, with Sei Miguel overseeing the project as trumpeter and director. The players: Fala Mariam, alto trombone, Manuel Mota, first guitar, Tiago Brandão, guitar, Margarida Garcia, twin (?), and Monsieur Trinité and César Burago on percussion. The piece has the outward appearance of a freely improvised structure, but all the music has been scored (although it seems there may have been some room for improvisation). The spirit is playful, the performances spirited yet restrained, challenging yet never too heavy or overbearing; there's never a moment when things seem out of control or off course, but the piece presents a single vision with many colours and phrases... I might call it experimental jazz, light edition. Richard di Santo, Incursion, 2002 Sei Miguel plays muted pocket trumpet, sounding at times not unlike Chet Baker, and the rest of his band consists of Fala Mariam on alto trombone, Manuel Mota and Tiago Brandão on guitars (Mota taking on more of a solo role), Margarida Garcia on twin (which on the photograph seems to be a two-string electric bass), and two percussionists, Monsieur Trinité and César Burago. Looks on paper like the line-up for a helluva salsa band, right? You couldn't be further from the mark: I am prepared to bet that trumpeter Miguel's music is unlike anything you've ever heard. Like his earlier earlier "Showtime" (Fabrica de Sons, FS 100.002, 1996), there's just one piece on "Still Alive..", a 40 minute track entitled "Favourite Places in Time". Miguel's working method, as described in a letter to Rui Eduardo Paes published in Revue & Corrigée in September 1999, is to work individually with his musicians to familiarise himself with their personal "micro-traditions" before incorporating their individual virtuosity into a "personal and transmittable" score. Although the instrumentation inevitably recalls jazz (which Miguel describes brilliantly as "a trans-idiomatic music with a cosmic vocation whose relatively mysterious origins lie in the explosion of various traditional musics, 'deported' and later 'magnetised' by the blues"), the structure of the music has more in common with Cage. There are no themes as such, no strong unifying pulse element, and never a sense of solo and accompaniment, since each musician effectively solos all the time. Players have their own material (quite restricted in nature for the bass and percussion) and their own space/time to articulate it in, and the piece as a whole admits the resulting polyphony without questioning, managing to sound both intelligently cool and emotionally sensitive at the same time. The fact that all the band members are photographed wearing cat masks may be significant: they all know how to purr contentedly while remaining inscrutable and fiercely independent. Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic Magazine, 2002