Recorded, mixed and mastered by Cristiano Nunes at Panteão Nacional, Lisbon, as part of Rescaldo Festival.
Produced by Susana Santos Silva
Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul
Design by Travassos
Clean Feed 2018
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Susana against the monument
Music was, until the advent of electrical amplification, deeply connected with the space where it was performed
The Gregorian chant was created for the reverberative space of Gothic cathedrals and the string quartets sound better in an XVIIIth century palatial room, between woods and stucco.
Written music has a sound dimension attached to it that does not allow much flexibility outside the architectural space for which it was intended. Not that a string quartet cannot be played outdoors, but it will sound sheepish, just as polyphony will suffer if it is sung in a small room.
Improvisation is not limited by space, as it is "site specific" as it is called in fine arts jargon. It lives from the moment and space and reads it. More than that, listens to it. This is the great practice of the improviser, of listening to the music while it is being created, of listening to the other musicians, the room and the end result simultaneously.
This new album by Susana Santos Silva holds the music of the solo concert that opposed her to the marble of the Portuguese National Pantheon (and vice versa) on February 12, 2016. She came alone with her trumpet and explored the immense sound of the temple, its long reverberation; a slim female figure, full of courage, shrouded in the sovereign enormity of the church that guards those who resist death. We almost hear her think as she experiments new ideas, talking with the echo, taking advantage of the response given by the stone walls. The music, almost magical, frees itself from the trumpet and returns to it, transformed by the architecture, to once again return to the room, in a continuum. There is a tension between the walls, which decline the sounds, and the trumpet that seeks to widen them, renewing the spirit and the poetics of that place.
While the trumpet blew, the Pantheon lived a joyful, human, not so majestic solemnity. This recording captures the beauty of that day, delicate and at the same time unrestrained, that reminds us that we have to take care of the living and believe that the world tends for the better. There are not many records like this.
Gonçalo Falcão
"All the Rivers is Santos Silva’s first solo album and it is superb" AAJ
"The inherent limitations of the instrument require the sort of imaginative and resourceful mind that Susana Santos Silva is fortunate to possess" Dusted Magazine
"It would be remarkable if Santos Silva merely explored the sound of the space, its shifting echoes and durations, but she does far more. She creates a profound, subtly evolving work that engages the possibilities of the trumpet and the building as if they were paired, like the two resonators on a veena" Free Jazz Blog
"It's recorded live, without overdub, all raw, and it's beautiful... The resolution is poetic and spiritual." Le Soir MAD
