Peixe and Frankie Chavez, two guitarists of Portuguese music, joined an instrumental project, “organic and acoustic“, which they called Miramar, the name of a seaside town and an album born there.
Pedro Cardoso (Peixe) and Francisco Chaves (Frankie Chavez) explained that composite songs mirror a tuning and mutual complicity, born in a house next to the beach, in Miramar (Vila Nova de Gaia).
In the genesis of this musical meeting was, in 2017, the initiative Guitars to the Top, created by Vasco Durão, Alentejo, thinking of unpublished guitar duos.
Peixe and Frankie Chavez took refuge for two days in a house in Miramar, working on songs for Guitars to the Alto concerts, months later they replicated this work in the studio and the result is now on record, with eleven songs from one and the other.
“The harmony that was created there was so profound that it generated this immense productivity. It was enhanced by the process of going to the beach, eating a ping-pong, it was a warm atmosphere, it was very relaxed,” explained Peixe.
“Ping Pong” is, in fact, the title of the first song they created, to which they added solo songs such as “Pine Trees” by Frankie Chavez and “Despassarado” by Peixe. cause of this dynamic in double.
The result is “a different instrumental song, it’s a melodious, harmonious thing, it’s not an exercise in technique and egos.” There are no egos here, “said Frankie Chavez.
The most melancholic of the songs, which summons a soundtrack idea of an imaginary film, was accentuated in the concerts they gave in 2018, with a visual projection of André Tentúgal and Jorge Quintela.
This component of image projection should be kept in the next concerts of Miramar. There are already marked presentations of the album on March 14 at the Casa da Música (Oporto), on the 26th of that month at the Teatro Villaret in Lisbon, and on the 30th at the Salão Brasil in Coimbra.
In “Miramar“, Peixe, 44, and Frankie Chavez, 39, play several guitars, including Portuguese guitar, electric guitar and weissenborn (slide guitar). Their relationship with this string instrument comes from childhood and adolescence, from learning between self-taught and academism.
“The most important thing was the Ornatos [Violet], to make music with my friends and spend many hours to experiment. The academic side is important, but without creativity, the academic side matters nothing,” said Peixe.
In addition to the Violet Ornatos – who will do several concerts in the summer – Peixe was still a founding musician of the Pluto, DEP, Zelig and OGBE – Guitars and Electric Bass Orchestra and released two albums solo.
Frankie Chavez, who remembers having started playing at age nine, learned jazz, passed the conservatory and learned to play things of the Violet Ornatos – “a guy when he is a fan has to learn from the ones he likes” – he released several albums at solo, including “Family Tree” and “Double or nothing“.
