FixWhatUSee

O grande concerto de abertura do Jazz em Agosto 2009 acontece já amanhã na fundação Gulbenkian, com um colectivo liderado pelo trombonista George Lewis. O projecto SEQUEL é uma homenagem a Lester Bowie e reune nomes com origens e vivências disti ntas que partilham o mesmo interesse pela experimentação na improvisação livre. Destaque para Kaffe Matthews (electrónica) e Miya Masaoka (koto, laptop, electrónica), sendo injusto para com os restantes elementos do super grupo liderado por Lewis. " A Composition for Cybernetic Improvisors " inaugura um festival dedicados aos "Ìcones e Inovadores" desta música que ainda se chama Jazz. George Lewis está, portanto, de regresso a Lisboa e no Domingo apresentará em conferência o seu livro recente: «A Power Stronger than Itself / The AACM and American Experimental Music».

" For many, he had simply been the greatest living artist since Samuel Beckett. He was American modern dance’s equivalent of Nijinsky: the long neck, the animal intensity, the amazing leap. In old age, when he could no longer jump and when his feet were gnarled with arthritis, he remained a rivetingly dramatic performer, capable of many moods. With his collaborator and life partner John Cage, Mr. Cunningham’s most celebrated achievement was to have dance and music composed independent of each other. His choreography showed that dance was principally about itself, not music, while often suggesting that it could also be about many other things as well. Merce Cunningham, the American choreographer who was among a handful of 20th-century figures to make dance a major art and a major form of theater, died Sunday night. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan. " from The New York Times Also: The Guardian Obituary Merce Cunningham - Pond way

(Via @StuartDMT ) Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo . Pictures and more details, here: www.behance.net

The centrepiece of the July Wallpaper* Sex issue is a unique collaboration between the magazine, the legendary art director Peter Saville and photographer Nick Knight .

We were free of the big corporate beast!

© Sander Mulder A broken bulb can not function, or can it ... ? Ideas do. They manage to work. Imagination turns the impossible into the possible. Design working: check how a broken bulb can be a beautiful lamp .

Global music, global happiness .

A menos de um mês para o arranque da 26ª edição do Jazz em Agosto , fixamos um conjunto de ideias colocadas a Rui Neves, programador do festival de Jazz da Fundação Gulbenkian. Uma provocação inicial, que me parece ser o paradigma com que esta música a que chamamos Jazz sempre teve de (con)viver. O Jazz há muito que rompeu com as suas próprias fronteiras de estilo e os criadores actuais fomentam a experimentação e o contacto com e a partir de outras músicas. O festival da Gulbenkian tem conseguido acompanhar e evidenciar as diferentes mutações desta música viva. Alguma vez pensaram em mudar o nome ao festival? Ainda é Jazz o que se vai ouvir no festival? O Jazz em Agosto, como muito bem diz, tem acompanhado as mutações do jazz, naquilo que, por nós, se tem assumido como sincrónico, mas também diacrónico, o que significa compreender de onde vem. As programações, apesar de apresentarem, por vezes, tendências desviadas e polémicas, contêm na sua maior extensão exemplos de expressões...

Portugal keeps on discussing about a TGV link to Spain. Why not? What is clear to me is the necessity to improve the internal railway network. High priority: more lines, better lines. With that question solved, lets go on board and run the Trans Europa Express

France is being forced to import electricity from Britain to cope with a summer heatwave that has helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action. [ Times Online ]

It's hard to imagine such a perfect music for a hot summer night in Lisbon. August is a month for Jazz at The Gulbenkian Foundation. Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy will play live outside, in the beautiful garden music hall. [ Thursday, 6 Aug 2009, 21:30 ] The first Dave Douglas' studio album in 3 years - Spirit Moves - has just been released on his GREENLEAF MUSIC label.