American guitarist Marc Ribot will open the Jazz festival in August in Lisbon with protest songs from the album “Songs of Resistance”, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation revealed today.
[dropcap type=”default”]”I[/dropcap]t is Marc Ribot and his project that fits the opening concert of the 36th Jazz in August, giving the motto for an edition under the sign of resistance and the collective cry for a fairer world,” says the organization of the festival.
Marc Ribot will present the album “Songs of Resistance“, released last year, on August 1st, in the open-air amphitheatre, where he has been in several editions, including in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018. in which he reinvents a songbook linked to protest, activism and resistance.
In “Goodbye Beautiful – Songs the Resistance 1942-2018” featured names like Tom Waits, Steve Earle and Meshell Ndegeocello, but in Jazz in August will be Marc Ribot to play the songs, accompanied by Jay Rodriguez, Brad Jones, Ches Smith and Reinaldo de Jesus.
Marc Ribot envisioned the album as a reaction to a political change in the United States with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. “I’m a musician, so I started my act of resistance with music,” he wrote in the accompanying text.
Ribot, 64, has had a regular presence on Portuguese stages. This year he has been with the trio Ceramic Dog in February in Braga and will be solo on the 30th in Espinho, and on May 2 in Portalegre.
On the theme of the revolution and the contest, which runs through this year’s program, the Lisbon festival recalls that “jazz has been able to channel and reinforce contestation and revolt in a way that is impossible to silence.”
Until August 11, there are 16 concerts planned between the outdoor amphitheatre and the auditoriums of the foundation.
Included in the program are Heroes Are Gang Leaders, a collective of “jazz, hip hop and spoken word“, created by writer Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, in honour of Amiri Baraka, one of the names of the Beat Generation, which died in 2014. The group, with 12 elements, acts on August 2.
The American trumpeter Daniel Rosenboom will be on August 3 with Burning Ghosts, “practitioners of a devilish fusion between jazz and metal,” and flautist Nicole Mitchell will present the afro-futurist work “Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds “, premiered in 2015 by order of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.
The musician Rui Horta Santos, who presents himself as Abdul Moimême, and for “one of the most stimulating encounters in Portuguese jazz in recent years” with Ricardo Toscano, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Miguel Mira and Gabriel Ferrandini.
In Lisbon will also be the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, accompanied by rapper Kokayi and the ensemble Mivos Quartet. The musician will take the album “Origami Harvest“, edited in 2018.
On August 9, the amphitheatre will be occupied by the Triple Double, project of the musician Tomas Fujiwara, who will summon two batteries, two electric guitars and two blows, guaranteeing a series of musical unfoldings.
This Triple Double concert is also linked to the one that will end the Jazz in August, on August 11, with guitarist Mary Halvorson.
The guitarist, who is part of the Triple Double, performs in a name for the album Code Girl, accompanied by singer Amirtha Kidambi and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.
All programming will be available on the official website of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
