Yorick
Holy cow and Moses ... what a session, this is great, pure saxophone and it's hard to sit still for the joy of it all, thanx to Rodrigo as well to Ricardo and David for mix/mastering .. this is a unique snapshot for friends
Comes in a beautiful wallet gatefold with artwork by master photographer Laurent Orseau and liner notes by Stuart Broomer
Includes unlimited streaming of Refraction Solo (Live at Church of The Holy Ghost)
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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sweet Freedom is a marked departure for Rodrigo Amado, a creative response to the Covid-19 lockdown. Amado has long focussed on collective improvisations, eschewing fixed melodies for conversational interaction in his bands Motion Trio and This Is our Language and numerous ad-hoc projects. The lockdown meant focusing on a different kind of dialogue, a conversation with the tenor saxophone legacy and his own roots. That focus invokes two strongly linked figures, Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins, the first great explorers of solo saxophone and both profoundly involved in protest and issues of identity.
Hawkins’ 1939 recording of “Body and Soul” foregrounded the individual improviser, a continuous invention after an initial theme statement. In 1945 Hawkins recorded the unaccompanied, two-part “Hawk’s Variations”, predating his aptly named “Picasso” by two years. Rollins recorded the unaccompanied “It Could Happen to You,” in 1957, then recorded a solo “Body and Soul”, clear invocation of Hawkins, a year later. Rollins recorded Freedom Suite in 1958 as well, the most developed protest recording in jazz since Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” nearly 20 years before. Two years later, Hawkins brought a new intensity to Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.
Rodrigo Amado’s first solo recording is a trip into the present through the past, into the past through the present, but it’s also a journey from multiple points into its own moment, a biographical construction, a solo performance that is a collective act, a letter to multiple histories. Sweet Freedom begins with a certain melody, both a journey in and a journey out, like a thread of Ariadne now the key to myriad narratives. This particular Sweet Freedom has deep roots, a dive into personal memory and essential links in a chain, touching on the beginnings of a voice and a bond with history, forty years of tenor playing and a century of tenor history, the latter a chorus of a thousand, Ammons to Zoot, Young to Ayler.
All improvisation is about dialogue, perhaps especially solo improvisation, but here the principle of dialogue goes beyond the presence of audience, beyond melody or form. It’s the song of consciousness, the run, the cadenza, the singalong sungalong sungabout stream of consciousness that is also the world, or here a river, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Tagus and Tajo and Tejo, a singular river of many inflections, but there’s also a colonial double that runs in Brazil, this solo, this Sweet with addenda a river too, suggesting all those rivers. Histories? Colonies? Rollins’ St. Thomas, Portugal’s Angola, Mozambique, Guinea and Brazil. or António Lobo Antunes’ As Naus (The Return of the Caravels), all kin to Amado’s own expansive vision...
…There’s a torrent of speech-like notes, individually shaped and inflected, theme become rallying cry and insight … how close might a horn come to speech, until what is lost in a certain specificity of language is made up in the incisiveness of timing, in the micro-variations of tone, pitch and inflection … a near-tongue to pass near-universally, a human language of freedom … an aura of a larger voice beckons here, both an orator’s summoning and an oracle’s vision … There is torrent here, also refractions, a singing sweetness, an airiness, a folk song wisdom out of Ayler and McPhee and above all Amado’s own nearness of earness, a hearing that will clarify extended multiphonics, each sub-tone in the blur revealing another layer of meaning and identity, that expansive global and circulating “St. Thomas”, that joy ripped from the maw of colonialism, now some immediate dance.
Is it the presence of strong melody here that loosens a listener’s tongue? Here listening is loosened, language, too, loosened, a rush of associations, like a Northern Irish bard’s tripping “into the slipstream”, a poet’s title, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, surrenders its opposite, in responsibilities begin dreams, in these gestures and sounds, here the responsibility to dream is a song sung solo (and “song sung long”), yet it’s a community of imminent voices, this particular dream a long-term choir reaching out across pandemic isolation and global trauma to this defining song, dreams of freedoms past and future … Here a solo song singing insistently of the social through the shards of fixed melody, that absence previously foresworn in Amado’s practice, that freedom in melody’s memory here insistently restored in the solo music as sign of the larger community and its reach.
There is something going on here about form and genre and the typology of song … melody, beginning, theme, enclosure, the head (human or song form), a listing attic … Here certain polarities of genre collapse. Take reverie, ballad, hymn, love song … Or work song, march, shout, round … Take dance … Take parade, fanfare … Here they come to triumph or die. Reverie, ballad, hymn, love song, dance … all of them alive, thriving, while fanfares shrivel before the song of consciousness.
Stuart Broomer
The name of the first tune is "Sweet Freedom", which nods both to Sonny Rollins’ Freedom Suite and to Joe McPhee, through Sweet Freedom, Now What. In a way, Joe's solo music was also a big influence on this recording, for his ability to totally abandon himself to the music and also for his way of balancing the most primal and pure roots with an authentic spiritual vibe.
Rollins was, of course, the primary influence for the recording. This album was recorded right after the pandemic started to ease down and concerts were allowed again.
I decided to do a string of solo concerts to sublimate the energy and the ideas I had been working with during that whole 2-year pandemic period. For me those two years were really interesting and inspiring.
I can be kind of an eremite and I really love (and sometimes need) to be alone. So, all that emptiness, in the streets, on the roads, at the beach, was very interesting and even magical in a way. Although people were instructed to stay at home, unless absolutely necessary, I took those instructions lightly and kept living my life - going to the studio to practice, going to the beach to exercise and taking the opportunity to visit some places that are usually too crowded. I was determined to take the best possible energy from those very tragic and grim circumstances.
I spent hours and hours in the studio woodshedding. When my usual practice routine started to wear thin, I decided, among other strategies, to investigate classic jazz tunes that were part of my roots as a musician.
From those tunes - by Coleman, Cherry, Rivers, Monk and Rollins - Rollins' compositions were the ones that resonated strongest, partly because he was a main influence on my early learning process.
Only now I can I understand this better. I think it has to do with the sound. That huge, solid core sound left a deep impression on me. I remember buying "Sonny Rollins, Vol. 1" in a fancy 180gram vinyl pressing and his sound...!!! Through intense exploration I tried to isolate the structural elements of these tunes, present not only in the themes themselves but also in the improvisations, something I did in a deliberate and very rational way, to further incorporate them in my own improvisations, this time in an intuitive way, without forcing myself. In the beginning it was a frustrating process, but after a while …I had a lot of time... a refraction process started happening and I could hear these traces of early roots blending with my own improvised language, transforming it. … and I loved it.
Meanwhile, in the middle of all this process, I was also realizing the obvious limitations of the instrument I had. And this became an obsession.
I had tried a horn, a Selmer Balanced Action Tenor from 1945, and something in its sound just blew me away. This instrument was from the last year of WWII and the metal used to build it was said to be from church bells that were melted to make bullet capsules that were then also amassed and melted to make those horns. Hard to confirm, but a beautiful story.
After many attempts I was able to buy that horn (I still have it), but although I was happy with the sound, I was still struggling with the keys and the slightly awkward action. So, in July 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic period, I decided to travel to Paris (two or three more passengers in the whole plane) to try out another tenor that seemed to have just everything I needed -- that early Selmer sound and a slightly more modern, updated, key action. I had one hour to try it and decide before flying back to Lisbon. So I finally got it - a Super Balanced Action Selmer tenor from 1951. This is the one I used on this recording and that I've been using ever since. I feel it works like an organic extension of my ideas. It changed my playing in the sense that it allows me not to compromise.
This specific concert took place on July 4th, 2021, one exact year after I got the new horn. A lot of things were at play: the sheer physical pleasure I was getting from playing that instrument; the spiritual energy left from those two years of isolation, contemplation (yes) and reflection; the fact that we were able to play concerts again and to engage with an audience (this was one of my first concerts in a long, long while); and also, very important, the presence of Eva, Maria and Laura. It was a very special vibe. I honestly don't think I could ever replicate the music I played on that day. I wouldn't want to, either.
Rodrigo Amado
credits
released October 28, 2022
Rodrigo Amado – tenor saxophone
All compositions by Amado
Recorded by Ricardo Pimentel at Igreja do Espírito Santo, Caldas da Rainha, July 4th, 2021
Mixed by Ricardo Pimentel and Rodrigo Amado
Mastered by David Zuchowski
Produced by Rodrigo Amado
Executive production by Konstantin Drobil
Liner Notes by Stuart Broomer
Cover Photo by Laurent Orseau
Concert Poster by Nayara Siler
Design by Rodrigo Amado and Travassos
Special thanks to Ricardo Pimentel and the Grémio Caldense team (Nayara Siler, Susana Valadas, Francisca Branco, Tanya Caldeira, Amador Fernandes, Filipe Simões), Laurent Orseau, Stuart Broomer, Joaquim Monte, Luís Lopes, José Bruno Parrinha, Travassos, Maria Amado and Eva Cipriano.
This recording was supported by Grémio Caldense and Fundação GDA
Recently voted as #1 Tenor Saxophonist on El Intruso International Critics Poll, as stated by a poll of 50 critics and
writers from 18 countries, Rodrigo Amado frequently tours Europe and North America with his own groups. Stuart Broomer wrote: "Amado is an emerging master of a great tradition, more apparent with each new recording or performance."...more
supported by 28 fans who also own “Refraction Solo (Live at Church of The Holy Ghost)”
Simply amazing to hear a new album with Wadada and Ewart!! ...And Reed rounds out this trio beautifully.
Just gave it my first spin. Absolutely magical. jeffrey maurer
The Hein Weingard Trio mix free improvisation and controlled composition, making music for avant-garde jazz adventurers. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 10, 2023
