Orquestra da Ópera na Academia e na Cidade + Nook \"Piazzolla e Divas do Jazz

ALiCE, in collaboration with the 3 R&D units, CEFT, LEPABE and LSRE-LCM, are sponsors of the Researchers’ Concert: Orquestra da Ópera na Academia e na Cidade + Nook "Piazzolla e Divas do Jazz". The concert will take place on 22 november 2023, 21:30 h, at FEUP´s Auditorium (free access).
The Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (gentile for Buenos Aires) are inspired by Antonio Vivaldi's four seasons. They are a set of four tango compositions, originally conceived and treated as different and independent compositions, rather than a suite, and published on different albums over time by the composer.
However, Piazzolla did perform them together on occasion. The pieces were composed for a quintet with violin, piano, guitar, double bass and bandoneon.
Presented in chronological order, the version heard tonight in an arrangement for strings, in which the violin plays a predominant role and is not the only soloist, is by violinist and performer Rómulo Assis. Unlike other versions for strings popularised in the 1990s, this arrangement avoids the platitudes and pastiches of including elements of Vivaldi in the porteño seasons. Inspired by the tradition of typical Buenos Aires orchestras, the arrangement endeavours to be faithful to the original version - for quintet.
Following on from this narrative, the jazz quartet Nook, with an album out in 2021, will perform a tribute to female jazz interpreters. Names like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Sarah Vaughn and Dinah Washington brought beauty and sophistication to a mostly male field, where they stood out for their candour, but they also opened doors for the affirmation of women's role as musicians, performers on stage and in the studio, as soloists and as individual artists. Each of these personalities is musically distinguished by her timbre, her approach to improvisation and the rhythmic phrasing and ornamentation of the melodies, written, lyricised and harmonised by men, for the most part.
'Jazz Divas' seeks to find common ground between the magnitude of orchestral music and the simplicity of the vast majority of jazz standards eternalised by these figures, with the aim of highlighting the contribution of some female voices to the development and proliferation of vocal jazz as a musical style with a golden age in the first half of the 20th century.
Rómulo Assis - musical direction
Mariana Vergueiro - voice
Pedro Neves - piano
Nuno Campos - double bass
Ricardo Coelho - drums
Know more here.