Carlos Zíngaro: "Gostei bastante e penso estar uma captação impecável." "A discreta leveza da profunda densidade."
Hernâni Faustino: "O teu disco a solo é um "statement"."
João Lucas: "Parabéns pela realização e pela profundidade. O que te propões conceptualmente corresponde de forma muito clara à experiência de audição, pelo que parece teres atingido uma bela vitória expressiva."
"As intermittent frails move to the foreground so does a touch of melody. But the key to Aqui, Dentro is how nearly oppressive bulk can be made to express polychromatic tones with an inventive strategy."
Ken Waxman, The Whole Note, Canada
"This unique translation through this continuous music around this basic woody vibration is achieved with great class and true mastery." (...) "This music is not meant to be "exciting", but leads us to a calmed reflection and a form of meditation. Time flows towards nothingness, solitude brings us together."
Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg
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(text inside the CD)
"Pede-me o autor umas linhas sobre este seu trabalho. Ora tendo eu, a partir dele, vivido uma experiência auditiva deveras gratificante, nada mais natural do que procurar traduzir em palavras o que esta música produz em mim, de modo a proporcionar ao candidato a ouvinte uma antecipação proveitosa, que desempenhe o seu papel de orientar a audição sem condicionar, porém, a peculiaridade da experiência.
Ocorre que, justamente, a peculiaridade da experiência parece-me ser a grande volúpia desta música. A experiência que permite, nas palavras do próprio autor, "descobrir, dentro do som que ouve, (uma corda solta em arco, uma nota fundamental num sopro em respiração contínua), toda a música que nele existe", por camadas, em espiral, até ao infinito potencial. Todavia, a experiência sempre fica ora no aquém, ora no além de toda a significação e, portanto, é escusado procurá-la nas palavras...
Assim sendo talvez seja mais proveitoso pensar nas condições dessa experiência, e sem querer ataviar estas linhas com prosápias extemporâneas, gostaria de lembrar uma famosa conceptualização de Martin Heidegger, suficientemente singela para ser evocada sem necessidade de recorrer às espessuras da erudição. Para pôr a experiência em movimento, Heidegger recorre à raiz etimológica da palavra que a designa, sendo que a palavra alemã para dizer experiência é Erfahrung, uma composição do prefixo er e da raiz fahr, fahren, que significa viajar, fazer uma travessia, atravessar. O propósito da experiência é alcançar alguma coisa que dista de mim e que me proponho atingir: “Fazer uma experiência significa literalmente: eundo assequi (do latim “indo para alcançar”); no andar, estando a caminho, alcançar uma coisa, andando, chegar num caminho”.
É deste modo que gosto de pensar na experiência de “Aqui, Dentro”, munido de botas cardadas e farnel para o caminho. Esta obra é uma localização geográfica que induz uma temporalidade aventurosa, um caminho a que me sujeito, que vem ao meu encontro e que me atravessa, uma jornada que não produzo nem operacionalizo, mas que antes me toma por inteiro na serenidade da minha abertura ao tempo, fora da distinção entre atividade e passividade, acolhendo-as simultaneamente, dizendo sim e não ao mundo, enquanto caminho num rumo desprovido de horizonte. Nesse rumo experimento a sensação de que o próprio músico me acompanha, tomado por idêntica vertigem, como se o contrabaixo se apoderasse do curso dos acontecimentos, arrastando o contrabaixista na simpatia vibrátil de uma corda voluntariosa de cuja sonoridade vai resultando a caprichosa matéria do tempo.
É só o que posso dizer, se quiser proporcionar um modesto aconselhamento a quem se dispõe a degustar este objeto peculiar, num caminho tão repleto de delicadas subtilezas quanto de brutas arestas: para viver essa experiência há que sofrê-la, ou seja, padecer o atravessamento dos gestos, desfrutar a metamorfose dos ritmos, vislumbrar a forma dos timbres que se encapelam na placidez das continuidades, estremecer ao surgimento de uma inusitada afloração de harmónicos ou de uma clara intencionalidade estruturante, ligar uma coisa de agora com a outra de há pouco, testemunhar o eterno retorno da presença no ir e vir de cada arcada, ser, em suma, surpreendido pela absoluta diferença na serena conformidade da repetição.
Conseguir esse despojamento tão diligente quanto negligente, tão industrioso quão contemplativo, tão desassossegado como silencioso, é, a meu ver, o desafio da performance auditiva adequada a esta proposta de João madeira. Uma performance que partilha, juntamente com a performance gravada pelo autor, o desafio das perturbações vibratórias da atmosfera sob a cúpula de um firmamento comum. Uma experiência do mundo partilhada em diferido, mas ainda assim uma particularíssima partilha do mundo." João Lucas
"The author asks me some lines about this work of his. Given that, based on it, I’ve lived a truly gratifying auditory experience, there’s nothing more natural than trying to translate into words what this music produces in me, in order to provide the potential listener with a helpful preview, which will play the role of guiding the hearing, though without conditioning the peculiarity of that experience.
As it happens, the peculiarity of that experience seems to be, precisely, the great voluptuousness of this music. The experience that allows, in the words of the author himself, “to discover, inside the sound he hears, (a loose string arching, a fundamental note in a blow of continuous breath), all the music that exists in it”, by layers, in spiral, until the potential infinity. Nonetheless, this experience always either falls short of or goes beyond all signification and, thus, it is pointless to search it in words…
Therefore, maybe it is more fruitful to think about the conditions of that experience and, not wanting to embellish these lines with extemporaneous boastings, I’d like to recall a famous conceptualization by Martin Heidegger, humble enough to be evoked without the need to draw on the thicknesses of erudition. To set the experience in motion, Heidegger draws on the etymological root of the word that names it, and the German word to say experience is Erfahrung, composed of the prefix er and of the root fahr, fahren, meaning to travel, to traverse, to cross. The aim of the experience is to attain something that is far from me and which I intend to reach: «To experience means eundo assequi [latin for “going in order to achieve”], to obtain something along the way, to attain something by going on a way”.
It’s like this that I like to think about the experience of “Aqui, Dentro”, equipped with hobnail boots and a packed lunch for the road. This work is a geographic location that induces an adventurous temporality, a road to which I submit myself, that comes towards me and crosses me, a journey that I don’t produce or operate, but that, instead, seizes all of me, in the serenity of my openness to time, outside the distinction between activity and passivity, embracing them both, saying yes and no to the world, while I walk along a path devoid of horizon. In that path, I experience the sensation of having the musician himself by my side, seized by an identical vertigo, as if the double bass was taking hold of the course of events, dragging the double bassist in the vibratile sympathy of a self-willed string from whose sonority results the whimsical matter of time.
This is all I can say, if I want to provide a modest counseling to those who are willing to savour this peculiar object, along a path with as many delicate subtleties as raw edges: in order to live that experience, you have to suffer it, meaning, to endure the crossing of the gestures, to enjoy the metamorphosis of the rhythms, to envisage the shape of the timbres that swell in the placidity of continuities, to shudder when an unexpected outcrop of harmonics or a clear structural intention arise, to connect a thing from now with another from a while ago, to witness the eternal return of the presence in the comings and goings of each arcade, to be, in short, surprised by the absolute difference in the serene conformity of repetition.
To achieve that stripping, as diligent as negligent, as industrious as contemplative, as restless as silent, is, in my opinion, the challenge of the auditory performance suitable to this proposal by João Madeira. A performance that shares with the performance recorded by the author the challenge of the vibratory disruptions of the atmosphere, under the dome of a common firmament. An experience of the world shared in a deferred manner, but, nonetheless, a very particular sharing of the world." João Lucas
(Translated by Miguel Martins)
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Reviews:
"With this new recording, made with the support of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores and Antena 2 / Radio Televisão Portuguesa the double bass player João Madeira has finally realized his dream of an opera realized in complete solitude. It was recorded during the lockdown and thought of as a completely improvised work, but something else came out of it, two movements that complement each other, an "exercise and a movement of the five desks as the soundtrack of the theatrical drama Hamlet Machineby Heiner Müller and directed by Jorge Silva Melo, the album is dedicated to the latter, who passed away during the recording period. The music was "implemented" for CD recording with impromptu improvisations and other effects. Calm music emerges, slowly telling a story in which there is something meditative. It is something not taken for granted, which deserves attention." Vittorio, Musiczoom Italia
""Aqui, Dentro" is João Madeira's solo album, where
again he presents a single track, "Agui, Dentro" in two
movements. It is beautiful achievenment of the solo double
bass music, comparable to the best works Damon
Smith, Burry Guy or Joëlle Léandre..." Maciej Lewenstein ****
"Concentrating on arco invention, fellow
Portuguese bassist João Madeira cycles
through all manner of burly drones on the
two extended instant compositions which
make up Aqui, Dentro (Miso Music MCD 49
22
misomusic.me). Lisbon-based Madeira,
who is part of other free jazz configurations, including a double bass duo with Faustino, concentrates on using sul ponticello and sul tasto slices to extrude a chunky interface that’s almost impenetrable. Nearly, but not completely. For among the reoccurring drones, tone gradations can also be heard. At points, elevated shrieks are heard, as if he’s cutting into the instrument’s wood as well as stroking the strings. At times, these high-pitched motifs take on viscous bassoon-like suggestion or bagpipe-like hums. Emphasizing ripples across the strings as tempos shift from lento to allegro, the heavy drones even maintain their shape elsewhere when Madeira’s progress ascends to allegrissimo and prestissimo. Often, emphasized passages are repeated so frequently in sequence that you begin to fear there’s a recording fault, until he exposes new singular textures that he buzzes to a resolution. Moving into the second selection, simultaneous warm vibrating plucks and knife-sharp strokes display his facility with both techniques. As intermittent frails move to the foreground so does a touch of melody. But the key to Aqui, Dentro is how nearly oppressive bulk can be made to express polychromatic tones with an inventive strategy."
Ken Waxman, The Whole Note, Canada
"Solo double bass for an intense projection in the deepest bass. Based on a concept, Joao Madeira creates an organic vibrating fabric around a haunting, slow ostinato, a low drone, an undifferentiated engine sound, an underwater vibration, on the same single note to which he gives a brief glissando. The work Aqui, Dentro is divided into two parts, Part 1 and Part 2 (24:12 and 16:50). After the tenth minute of Parte 1, a cadence is established and the rubbing gradually accelerates in stages into a monochordal run that fades a little around the 15-minute mark to release adjacent sonorities and create a rhythmic feel. The musician plays with the basic structure slowing and softening the pressure of the bow and making it take on new durations. As we move towards the end of this long piece, the movement gradually slows down and calms down, gradually fading into silence. This unique translation through this continuous music around this basic woody vibration is achieved with great class and true mastery. Parte 2 initiates a barely perceptible col legno slide on the surface of the strings and some isolated, slightly resonant pizz. Another completely different reality takes shape like a ghost, an ecstatic vision of almost nothing. We let ourselves dream in this ode to the silence that surrounds the double bassist in the studio. But Joao Madeira concocts a surprise by combining isolated low notes and muffled strings and this light vibration that joins the silence, the void. This music is not meant to be "exciting", but leads us to a calmed reflection and a form of meditation. Time flows towards nothingness, solitude brings us together." Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg,
orynx-improvandsounds.blogspot.com 
