Luis Vicente

The magnetic music of Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente has always been marked by its munificence and openness, revealing an intrinsic candour and purity of expression, where ideas and values are articulated, exchanged and cultivated without need for extraneous fuss or unnecessary obfuscation.

This international quartet first stepped on a stage in July 2021, on a tour of seven cities in Portugal supported by the GDA Foundation. Their support gave Portuguese trumpeter LUIS VICENTE the opportunity to put together a stellar band of JOHN DIKEMAN, a renowned North American saxophonist based in Amsterdam, with whom Vicente has built a fruitful relationship alongside William Parker and Hamid Drake; the North American bassist, LUKE STEWART, highlighted by Downbeat magazine as “one of the 25 most influential jazz musicians of his generation”, dued to his collaborations with Irreversible Entanglements, Moor Mother, Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star and Jaimie Branch; and ONNO GOVAERT, an outstanding Dutch drummer and a frequent figure on many European stages.

Since forming in March 2021, the Liba Villavecchia Trio have channelled a singular spiritual mien, borne of shared experience, reflection and reminiscence, with previous albums, Zaidín (2022) and Birchwood (2023) capturing the group’s esprit de corps in vividly contrasting approaches, hopscotching from propulsive swing and fractious bustle, to smouldering disquisition and evocative abstraction.

Vicente Amigo Girol is a Spanish flamenco composer and guitarist, born in Guadalcanal near Seville. He has played as an accompanying guitarist on recordings by flamenco singers Camarón de la Isla, and Luis de Córdoba, and he has acted as a producer for Remedios Amaya and José Mercé. His album Ciudad de las Ideas won the 2001 Latin Grammy for the Best Flamenco Album and the 2002 Ondas award for the best Flamenco work.

This is the second volume of the in-progress cross pollination of two geographical forces in the domains of creative jazz and free improvisation, a Portuguese one, represented by trumpeter Luís Vicente and guitarist Marcelo dos Reis, and a French one, put to action by the brothers Théo and Valentin Ceccaldi. The ground for this collaborative work is chamber music, the way we perceive it in the 21st century, and both the technical and the aesthetics of the renewed encounter happening inside Chamber 4 are in full improvisation: no scores, no structures of any kind, no previous discussions about what to do or not to do or any type of conceptual reasoning.