José Lencastre Nau Quartet - Live in Moscow (2019)

Everything in a Nau Quartet (the brothers José and João Lencastre plus 2/3 of Red Trio – Rodrigo Pinheiro and Hernâni Faustino) concert is improvised, benefiting from a stage situation. Here we find the Portuguese musicians when they played live in Russia one year ago, precisely the situation they fulfill best. In such a manner that each track is a statement in itself, very affirmative and with an astonishing drive and commitment – the same of the founders of both free jazz and free music, the two traditions these four dedicate themselves to converge and cross-polinate. Their concept is their praxis, and it’s simple to enunciate: always to use open and spontaneous structures, developing the emerging ideas collectively and in an organic, fluid, way. In the gathered improvisations you can recognize much more than the reconciled jazz and free improv lineages. For instance, José Lencastre’s alto sax is rooted in the cool tendency, sometimes reminding us of Lee Konitz and Paul Desmond, while Pinheiro’s piano DNA has references in Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano, Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, with something of Messiaen and Ligeti in the mix. Things can be quite intense, but the music never turns aggressive, just because there’s other ways to get to the point without shouting.