Details:

Date:

04Oct2024

Time:

22:30

Location:

Understage (Rivoli), Porto 🇵🇹

About event

Foto: Vera Marmelo

 
RAFAEL TORAL
4-10-2024, SEXTA
UNDERSTAGE (RIVOLI), PORTO
INÍCIO: 22:30
 
🇵🇹 Rafael Toral (Lisboa, 1967) tem-se intrigado pelo potencial do som e pelas funções da música desde adolescente. Enquanto músico, produtor e compositor esteve envolvido, em diferentes fases da sua vida, com as culturas de Rock, Ambient, Contemporânea, Electrónica e Jazz.
No início dos anos 1990 criou uma síntese de Ambient e Rock, gravando álbuns aclamados internacionalmente como Wave Field (Drag City, 1995) ou Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance (Touch, 2001) e tendo sido considerado pelo Chicago Reader “um dos guitarristas mais dotados e inovadores da década”. Nos anos 2000, com uma mudança radical lançou o “Space Program”, projecto em que ao longo de quinze anos desenvolveu uma abordagem à música electrónica enraizada no pós-free jazz, enfatizando o gesto físico e critérios humanos de decisão sobre fraseado, silêncio e swing. A música resultante, “melódica mas sem notas, rítmica mas sem batida, familiar mas estranha” foi descrita como “um tipo de música electrónica muito mais visceral e emotiva que a dos seus pares cerebrais”.
Depois de dirigir várias formações, inaugura em 2016 a formação que dirigiu até 2023, o Space Quartet. Em 2018 entrou numa terceira fase em que retoma contacto com a guitarra, num renovado interesse pelas possibilidades sónicas da harmonia, e ambiciona uma nova síntese — conciliando alguns paradigmas contraditórios com que trabalhou anteriormente, abarcando mais passado e mais futuro e materializada pela primeira vez em Spectral Evolution.
Publicou mais de vinte álbuns em editoras de quatro continentes, entre os quais também se destacam Sound Mind Sound Body (Ananana, 1994), Space (Staubgold, 2006) e Freedom of Tomorrow (Clean Feed, 2022). Em variadas colaborações ou a solo tem-se apresentado ao vivo nos Estados Unidos, Europa, Japão e Austrália. Vive nas montanhas do centro de Portugal e subirá ao Porto para apresentar no Understage, no dia 4 de outubro, aquele que já é um dos discos do ano.
 

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🇬🇧 Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon, 1967 has been intrigued by the potential of sound and the functions of music since he was a teenager. As a producer, composer and performer, he has been deeply involved with Rock, Ambient, Contemporary, Electronic and Free Jazz music in different periods of his life.
Working with electric guitar and electronics, in the 1990’s he pioneered a blend of Ambient and Rock and recorded acclaimed albums like Wave Field or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. By the early 2000’s he arrived to a sense of accomplishment about his previous 15 years of work, also realizing the world needed a different creative response. In a transition to vulnerable action, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program in 2004, using experimental electronic instruments. It was an ambitious long-term project exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through decision making and physical gesture, in a way inspired by post-free Jazz. The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”.
In the ensuing 15 years and beyond, he practiced an understanding of silence as “space”, with a clear function in music creation but also as a metaphor for social relationships and a stance on information and sensory overload.
In 2017, having concluded the Space Program’s recording series, the release of Moon Field marks the beginning of transition to a new phase, in a way that builds on recent developments (mainly with the Space Quartet) but also integrates them with other elements. Returning to the electric guitar with a renewed interest in harmony, Toral synthesized all of the above on the newest Spectral Evolution album, released in February 2024.
Performing solo or in numerous collaborations (including Jim O’Rourke, Jim Baker, Sei Miguel, Chris Corsano, John Edwards, Evan Parker, Tatsuya Nakatani, Manuel Mota, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham, Lee Ranaldo, Eiko Ishibashi, and many others), he has been touring throughout Europe, Canada, USA, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Porto’s premiere of one of the best records of the year will be at Understage next October 4th.
 

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