🇬🇧 Today 2pm (Lisbon time) I will be speaking at Nova Contemporary Music Meeting about 3 online performances that I did last year, and sharing some thoughts that I had from those experiences.
It includes that day of improvisations given through WhatsApp, that Piano miniatura YouTube concert, and that Full Moon Instagram live.
🇧🇷 Hoje às 14h (horário de Lisboa) eu vou falar no Nova Contemporary Music Meeting sobre 3 performances online que eu fiz no ano passado, e compartilhar alguns pensamentos sobre essas experiências.
Isso inclui aquele dia de improvisações através do WhatsApp, aquele concerto no YouTube ‘Piano miniatura’ e aquela live no Instagram, ‘Full Moon’.
I am really honoured to be curating the next Oxford Improvisers keyboard-focused concert.
‘Great to welcome pianist Angelica Sanchez live from New York to this special event in celebration of Piano Day – Ok, so that’s actually a week later, but still!
Sanchez is a phenomenal player who’s played with a whole host of US musicians from Wadada Leo Smith to Marilyn Crispell who she duos with’.
In her piano playing as well as her compositions Angelica Sanchez seeks out the lyrical heartbeat within any avant-garde storm…
The New York Times
The live online broadcast will also feature Dots, Blocks & Lines, a piece which I devised for the Oxford Improvisers Keyboard Ensemble. And programme also includes a reprobate collection of non-keyboard players too.
Earlier this year I was invited by Noah Max to participate in the Secret Sequenza Series: a new process where composers write for each other without knowing who they are writing for, then premiere each others’ work without knowing who wrote it.
This was one of my the first experiences as a composer, and the first one when I wrote to another performer.
I was really delighted then to hear my piece – from water – being given a beautiful and very sensitive première by David Evans on the concert streamed on the 10th March.
(from water starts at 40:26)
As everything in this project is surprise, I am just guessing that my performance will be featured on next episode of the series. I can’t wait to find out who my composer is!
This Saturday I will be the special guest at The Listening Room, a free improvisation Youtube live stream event organised by Phil Morton and his house ensemble.
Starting at 2:30pm (UTC) with a duo: NICK BRANTON, reeds PHIL MORTON, accidents and treatments
Following with my solo – piano & toy pianos Then a duo of myself and MARTIN HACKETT, korg ms
And finishing with a nice quartet KÉSIA DECOTÉ, piano. toy piano MARTIN HACKETT, korg ms NICK BRANTON, reeds PHIL MORTON, accidents and treatments
Everything started with a tweet that I sent during the first lockdown this year, asking for suggestions of piano miniatures written by female composers.
Charlotte Botterill sent me then one miniature that she had just written, reflecting her feelings in that period of lockdown. For this first one, Charlotte carried on writing piano miniatures, expressing her feelings and events of such peculiar times. When the restrictions were lifted, Charlotte felt that was the moment to close the collection, and invited me to record them!
This is such a special project, which I couldn’t be prouder to be part of. While being far away (I was in Brazil, and Charlotte was in the UK), I felt so connected to Charlotte’s feelings translated in music. I recorded the 15 piano miniatures in Rio at Laranjeiras Records, with Márcio Dornelles as my sound engineer.
It’s with such a pleasure that we present you the album ‘Isolation’, which was released today through the new label Lis de la Mer.
The album is available digitally through all major platforms, and in a limited CD edition which is accompanied by exclusive art prints by Rosie Botterill (who also signs the art of the album).
Very special thanks to Thalyson Rodrigues, for the superb musical assistance during the recording session.
É com imenso prazer que vou participar das celebrações do centenário de Clarice Lispector com o Group .BR, a única companhia brasileira de teatro sediada em New York.
Será um dia inteiro de eventos transmitidos através das plataformas online do grupo. A minha participação será às 16h30 (horário de Brasília) na programação Clarice na Música tocando a peça perto do coração selvagem para piano de brinquedo da compositora portuguesa Sara Carvalho, inspirada pela obra homônima de Clarice Lispector.
Para maiores detalhes do evento e link para as transmissões, por favor visite a página Dia de Clarice no website do Group .BR:
It’s a great pleasure to take part in the celebrations of Clarice Lispector’s centenary with Group .BR, NY’s only Brazilian Theatre Company.
It will be a day of online events, and my participation will be at 4:30pm (BRT) playing the work perto do coração selvagem for toy piano by Portuguese composer Sara Carvalho.
For details of the event and link to the transmissions, please visit the page Clarice’s Day at Group .BR website.
Early this year, when I was in self-isolation in Brasília due to the coronavirus pandemic, I started thinking about miniatures.
In a way, our homes became our universes in miniature. We spend so much time in the same old spaces with the same old objects, that they may start to become new. Suddenly, we have so much – and so little – time in our hands.
I also wanted to explore ways to share piano music, taking advantage of possibilities of the video format.
‘Piano miniaturas’ is a kind of video-piano-recital, with images collected within my then apartment over those months, and music which I recorded during the day of 23 May 2020, acknowledging all the environment noises and the passing of time in one day in this context of pandemic self-isolation.
You can watch it from Sunday 06 December, 4pm (UK time), on Youtube.
.
Na primeira metade desse ano, enquanto eu estava em isolamento em Brasília por causa da pandemia coronavírus, eu comecei a pensar em minuaturas.
De certa forma, nossas casas se tornaram nossos universos em miniatura. Passamos tanto tempo dentro dos mesmos velhos espaços com os mesmos velhos objetos, que de repente eles se revelam novos. Temos tanto – e tão pouco – tempo em nossas mãos.
Esse período foi também uma oportunidade de experimentar outras formas de compartilhar música ao piano, explorando possibilidades do formato de video.
‘Piano miniaturas’ é uma espécie de video-recital, com imagens coletadas de dentro do meu então apartamento durante os primeiros meses de isolamento, combinadas com gravações ao piano realizadas durante o dia 23/05/2020, reconhecendo o barulho e o passar do tempo em um dia típico desse contexto de isolamento em pandemia.
Música de Charlotte Botterill, Yfat Soul Zisso, & Erik Satie.
Você pode assistir a partir de domingo 06 de dezembro, 13h (hora de Brasília), no meu canal no Youtube.
In an evening spotlighting the spoken word, Oxford Improvisers worked with poems by Maggie Goren and Rosalind Bleach and explore the sonic properties of a single word in a piece by Jill Elliott. Live streamed through Oxford Improvisers Youtube channel.
I did a 2 minutes solo interlude on piano + toy pianos pianos.
This Friday 06 November, Para a frente, my debut EP with Nonclassicalis released!
Interweaving evocative piano lines with whimsical toy piano and pulsing electronics, the EP celebrates Decoté’s close collaborations with emerging composers. Taking its name from Yfat Soul Zisso‘s playful fragment for toy piano, Para a frente includes works by composers Michael Taplin, Angela E Slater, Omar Peracha and Max Gibson. (Nonclassical)
Recordings are from a concert at The Holywell Music Room in Oxford last year and from a studio session at Studio Sinal Music in Brasília this year, with additional mixing by Gabriel Prokofiev.
I am really thrilled to share this amazing music which means so much to me, and through this awesome label!
Digital album available through Bandcamp.
Order your copy, enjoy, and let me know your thoughts!
Very special thanks to Bruno Guastalla for the live recordings and image of the album cover, Antonio Martins Neto for the promotional photos, and Xenia Pestova Bennett for the key encouragement, always! 💙
Lua cheia, fantasmas e (quase) canções de ninar…uma pequena performance nessa sexta-feira véspera de halloween.
Música para piano, piano de brinquedo, & piano elétrico, de John Cage, Yfat Soul Zisso, Ben Gaunt & Stephen Montague.18h13 (hora de Brasília), no meu instagram.
Images do poster: Fausto Motta / Antonio Martins Neto
