Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Patrick Brennan/Maria do Mar/Ernesto Rodrigues/Miguel Mi...

Patrick Brennan/Maria do Mar/Ernesto Rodrigues/Miguel Mira/Hern?ni Faustino/Abdul Moimême: The Sudden Bird of Waiting

By Karl Ackermann
July 16, 2020
View read count

Patrick Brennan/Maria do Mar/Ernesto Rodrigues/Miguel Mira/Hernâni Faustino/Abdul Moimême: The Sudden Bird of Waiting

Portuguese violist Ernesto Rodriques has appeared as a leader/co-leader on almost two-hundred recordings. He has recorded with The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, the Luso-Scandinavian Avant Music Orchestra, and several other ensembles. Rodriques was in Lisbon in 2018 when Portuguese native

Abdul Moimême

guitar, electric
b.1959

" data-original-title="" title="">Abdul Moimême and American saxophonist

Patrick Brennan

saxophone, alto

" data-original-title="" title="">Patrick Brennan were recording their duo venture Terraphonia (Creative Sources Recordings, 2019). At Rodriques' suggestion, the artists launched a project that would pair their experimental skills with an improvising Lisbon string quartet. The resulting album, The Sudden Bird of Waiting, is an unusually creative collection that defies description.

Brennan's saxophone (and occasionally, cornet) can be an unfathomable portal to a different musical language, and Moimême's dual customized electric guitars are played together with a bow or other device, and prepared with an assortment of items. The string quartet is a variation here; violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Except for Brennan, the artists had collectively worked on Sul (Creative Sources, 2018), a large ensemble free improvisation project that included percussionist

Andrew Drury

drums
b.1964

" data-original-title="" title="">Andrew Drury. Bassist Hern?ni Faustino appeared with

Jon Irabagon

saxophone

" data-original-title="" title="">Jon Irabagon on Absolute Zero (Not Two Records, 2013), and on Birthmark (Clean Feed, 2017) with

Lotte Anker

saxophone
b.1958

" data-original-title="" title="">Lotte Anker. Miguel Mira has worked extensively with Rodiques across a dozen recordings, including Incidental Projections (Creative Sources, 2017) with

Fred Lonberg-Holm

cello
b.1962

" data-original-title="" title="">Fred Lonberg-Holm.

The music on The Sudden Bird of Waiting cannot be described in conventional terms. "O largo aberto das diafonias alertas" rises out of silence, carefully ticking off the contributors and building to a fully engaged sextet. In its late stages the piece takes on a grounded solemnity, but at all points in its thirteen minutes it suggests a surreal consciousness. An interchange between Brennen and Faustino begins "Deslize M?bial. The strings then take the piece on an open-ended colloquy. "Nextness" is driven by the persistent alto, broken up by a rhythmic Brennan spoken word reading of a Randee Silv passage. On "A que dist?ncia?" the instruments appear as physical motions, never quite falling in line with each other but aware—and empathetic—of the surrounding movement.

There is a lot of complicated unpacking to do here, but much of The Sudden Bird of Waiting has an inexplicable warmth even in its overt abstraction. Like Brennen and Moimême's previous work, much of the interest is generated by the sextet giving alternate voices to their instruments. Moimême often shape-shifts in his adherence between strings and saxophone, when he isn't emitting hybrid sounds. It makes tracking his influence challenging, but that is by design. This is daring experimental music, spontaneous and cerebral.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

O largo aberto das diafonias alertas; Deslize M?bial; Nextness; A que dist?ncia?; O pássaro repentino da espera.

Personnel

Patrick Brennan

saxophone, alto

Maria do Mar

violin

Ernesto Rodrigues

viola

Miguel Mira

cello

Hernani Fuastino

bass, acoustic

Abdul Moimême

guitar, electric

Additional Instrumentation

Patrick Brennan: cornet

Album information

Title: The Sudden Bird of Waiting | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Creative Sources Recordings

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Awareness
< Previous

Myasmo
Next >

Patrick Brennan Concerts

Oct 11 Sat

Ingardens Festival

First Street Green Cultural Park
New York, NY

Oct 12 Sun

Ingardens Festival

First Street Green Cultural Park
New York, NY

Oct 13 Mon

Ingardens Festival

First Street Green Cultural Park
New York, NY

Support All About Jazz

All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.