ernesto rodrigues

Bio:

The violinist Ernesto Rodrigues is a major improviser from Portugal on his own, but combined with his son Guilherme Rodrigues on the cello, he is part of one of a deeply expressive example of family bonding through creative music. Anyone would agree who has seen a live or filmed performance of the two in action on stage, the father crouching over his son somewhat akwardly in the throes of spontaneous composition but looking a bit like he is trying to smell the kid's breath for alchohol--not that a Portugese father would do such a thing. The senior Rodrigues has been active in avant garde music for several decades, aligning himself with many revolutionary forms of expression including micro-tonal tunings and the art of "preparing" stringed instruments by actually altering their physical structure. The violinist has performed with many groups on the Lisbon avant garde scene, most notably the ensembles Assemblage and Ficta. In the latter trio, the Rodrigues father and son work together with percussionist José Oliviera. The senior Rodrigues started in the direction of free improvisation groups such as this when he came in contact with the type of avant garde classical scores that are often described as "indeterminate," meaning quite a few of the details of the actual performance are left up to interpretation and/or serendipity. Rodrigues was also influenced by electronic music, like many improvisers on traditional instruments relishing the challenge of utilizing their axes to match, sound for sound, the noise coming out of plugged-in equipment. The violinist has performed for films, dance, performance-art projects and video as well as in concerts and on recordings. In 1999 he started up his own label, Creative Sources.

Eugene Chadbourne (All Music Guide)

DISCOGRAPHY

Movement Sounds - Leo Lab 032, London 1997

Musique de Chambre - IC 100, Lisbon 1999

Self Eater and Drinker - audEo 0399, Porto 1999

Multiples - CS 001, Lisbon 2001

Sudden Music - CS 002, Lisbon 2002

23 Exposures - CS 003, Lisbon 2002

Ficta - CS 005, Lisbon 2002

Assemblage - CS 007, Lisbon 2002

Cesura - CS 008, Lisbon 2003

Contre-Plongée [Six Cuts for String Quartet] - CS 011, Lisbon 2004

Dorsal - CS 012, Lisbon 2004

Kreis - CS 020, Lisbon 2005

Prisma - SF-4001, USA 2005

Diafon - CS 041, Lisbon 2005

Nostalgia - Ctrl 25, Italy 2006

Sable - CNV28, Spain 2006

Kinetics - CS 043, Lisbon 2006

Electric Trio - Esquilo, Porto 2006

Oranges - CS 068, Lisbon 2006

Undecided [A Family Affair] - CS 072, Lisbon 2006

Drain - CS 075, Lisbon 2006

Sen - CS 033, Lisbon 2006

Flexigos - GOS 007, Portugal 2007

London - CS 080, Lisbon 2007

Stills - CS 100, Lisbon 2007

Doppelgänger - CS 103, Lisbon 2007

Refrain - CS 097, Lisbon 2008

"May There Be..." - CS 134, Lisbon 2008

Ordinary Music vol. 3 - CS 136, Lisbon 2008

Paura - The Construction of Fear - CS 139, Lisbon 2008

Live at the Casa da Musica - VL2008-2, Lisbon 2008

Noite - CS 142, Lisbon 2008

Eterno Retorno - CS 144, Lisbon 2009

GioPoetics - CS 114, Lisbon 2009

Twrf Neus Ciglau - CS 156, Lisbon 2009

Fower - CS 161, Lisbon 2009

Vinter - CS 158, Lisbon 2010

Murmúrios - CS 170, Lisbon 2010

Our Faceless Empire - Pax PR 90289, S. Francisco 2010

Wounds of Light - CS 178, Lisbon 2010

Erosions - CS 172, Lisbon 2010

Way Out - New Music from Portugal – CD Ananana MMM 001, Lisbon 1999 (One track Compilation) - 6 "In Memoriam Wolf Vostell"

EMFP05 - Exploratory Music from Portugal – CD Wire, London 2006 (One track Compilation) - 15 "Thick Air"

Collection d'Univers Spontanés - CD Insubordinations, Genève 2006 (One track Compilation) - 10 "VGO Live at the Bomba Suicida"

Sonic Scope 2008 - CD GOS 22, Portugal 2008 (One track Compilation) - 1 "Sound Gathering Number One"

Member Since:

May 09, 2007

Sounds Like:

About "Contre-Plongée":

Introduce. The days of liner notes that merely provide a description of the music an album contains are long gone – we no longer need to be told how to listen, nor what to listen for – but when it comes to titles, hmm, maybe those words are important after all.. Ernesto Rodrigues – whose Creative Sources imprint is fast becoming one of Europe's essential labels in the domain of improvised music – could easily have chosen some gloriously rugged Portuguese sonorities and had us scurrying to our dictionaries in search of clarification, but instead has borrowed a French noun from the world of photography – "contre-plongée" translates as "low-angle shot", and the associated expression "en contre-plongée" means "from below" – and, to describe the six pieces on offer, the venerable English word "cut". Discuss. Elaborate. In the past ten years, practitioners of improvised music, finally severing the putrescent umbilical cord that attached the genre to its distant transatlantic parent, free jazz, have pushed the technique envelope of traditional acoustic instruments beyond all recognition – as if the instruments themselves have been approached from another angle altogether, as if seen from below.. Illustrate. One need merely draw up a list (woefully incomplete, at that) of standard instruments and namecheck the musicians whose furious innovation has taken them to another level altogether: trumpet (Axel Dörner, Greg Kelley, Franz Hautzinger and Matt Davis – to name but four!), trombone (Thierry Madiot..), tuba (Robin Hayward..), flute (Jim Denley..), oboe (Kyle Bruckmann..), clarinet (Kai Fagaschinski, Isabelle Duthoit..), soprano saxophone (Bhob Rainey, Alessandro Bosetti, Stéphane Rives..), violin (Mathieu Werchowski, Angharad Davies, Kazushige Kinoshita..), viola (Charlotte Hug..), cello (Martine Altenburger, Nikos Veliotis, Mark Wastell..), double bass (David Chiesa, Mike Bullock..), piano (Frédéric Blondy, Sophie Agnel, Andrea Neumann..), not to mention harp (Rhodri Davies..) and accordion (Alfredo Costa Monteiro..). And, en contre-plongée, let's add the names of Ernesto Rodrigues (violin and viola), Gerhard Uebele (violin), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello) and José Oliveira (bowed acoustic guitar and inside piano). Extend. "String quartet" needs some explanation too, then; the classical string quartet consists of two violins, viola and cello, but as Ernesto Rodrigues plays both violin and viola (though presumably not at the same time..) one could argue that the line-up here is a classical string quartet compressed into a trio. There's a wild card though, in the form of Oliveira – guitar passes as a stringed instrument, sure, but the piano is a percussion instrument, right? Conclude. Which takes us to "cut" – as in surgical intervention, or – to pursue the cinematic analogy – stop shooting: break, rethink, start again, remake, remodel. Why should the piano be a percussion instrument (one can, after all, bow those strings) and why should a violin not be a percussion instrument (it's about time we dispensed with "percussion" altogether – friction would be more appropriate..)? Cut, yes, time to take the scissors to the map, prepare a landing strip for the string quartet of the 21st century. Listen.

Dan Warburton (www.paristransatlantic.com)

Record Label:

Creative Sources Recordings