Cerebral setting: João Paulo Esteves da Silva, left, and Ricardo Toscano
Gazing at the cover, the first thing I thought – no kidding Sherlock – was this looks like the sort of cover and graphic art for their releases that ECM choose to purvey.
But does that comparison stack up when it comes to the music itself? Possibly.
Avant-garde on some tracks – naturalistically melodic on others – the bare bones of what is presented is simple enough and the release falls within the “art” side if being crassly reductive of the art/entertainment dichotomy. Other dichotomies are available before you reach for your rifle spluttering over the temerity of the idea.
A saxophone. An alto one at that. A piano. The territory is if you can imagine this is a fixture that might have come over something like a meeting between Paul Bley and Tim Berne if such a thing is even possible to imagine.
Somehow the pair of Portuguese musicians responsible for the at times rather beautiful duo settings manage to scale up their sound into something more momentous without being too grand about it. But this is serious music – you get that on ‘Empty CIstern’.
Bowled over? Not quite but I liked it a good deal. Saxophonist Ricardo Toscano has a beefy “don’t blow the bloody roof of it” sort of sense of assault to him when he pulls back from all out combustion while the pianist João Paulo Esteves da Silva provides more aesthetic balm jutted against the rough and tumble of the serpentine improvising and semi-composed lines. Recorded in an empty hall in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon at a 600 capacity venue inside Culturgest, it’s not going to get the party started. But neither is it a case of “oh I must retreat to a desert island for 20 years” to contemplate my navel either afterwards suitably moved.
The album includes a version of ‘Grito Mudo’ – a piece that means “Silent Scream” in English – that appeared on a Toscano quartet album 8 years on.
