© Rita Draper Frazão

Inner Tour is a blog about People, Arts and Traveling by Rita Draper Frazão.
If you want to use my work, presented here, please send me a message.

12.09.2015

A festival of personalities

My last musical adventure took place, drawing the 9th edition of the Creative Sources Festival in Lisbon. I drew and wrote impulsively during the concerts, and the outcome is here.

Francisco Trindade, a.k.a. Monsieur Trinité
From the Trinity in the world, came Monsieur Trinité.
Only a special person as Monsieur Trinité, could turn rudimentary things of everyday life in sublime specialties. This is about the peculiar abilities of his hands, it's about his jocular humor, it's about making the most with simple things. It's about him.


Abdul Moimême
This drawing's idea started off with the instrument Abdul has built himself, his prepared guitar. I looked at it and wondered about the fragility of its equilibrium and the precision required to maneuver it. 

This is a drawing about the difficulty of rightness, the easiness of mistakes and thence the crooked lines, the clumsy squares, the dirty tracing and also the pallet of colors chosen. 

Black, grey and white reminded me of the Buddhist triple truth: something that can be itself, its opposite and both of them at the same time. But, between the thing itself and its opposite, there is a long process, of exercises, of trying - and, ultimately, that's what this portrait is all about.


Here's a drawing about someone embodying joy and life: the Spanish saxophonist, Albert Cirera. I decided to draw him just in yellows, for a strong reason and it's related to another concert where he played too. So I need to tell you guys a bit more about it. 

This was a group with four musicians - José Bruno Parrinha, Paulo Curado, Albert Cirera and Paulo Chagas. All of them played in this festival too in different groups, but the special thing in this concert I'm referring to, was that all of them played just flute. I wrote a text about it, back then, where I attributed a word to each one of them, and Albert's was the sun.

Effortlessly, Albert is someone that radiates. I felt I had to draw spontaneously with loads of yellow, the color of this star. 
One detail to notice though, is that in the original drawing, one of the three yellows has a fluorescent shade, that's not reproducible here. 


Above is the portrait from the violin player Ernesto Rodrigues
It's rare I have such good light and proximity to a musician to the point I can do such a close-up portrait, so I was glad I did.


The Swiss drummer, Sheldon Suter, used something alike Tibetan singing bowls, during the concert, and the shape on the top right of the drawing, is inspired by them. 
With carroty hair, and a matching color necklace, orange was always present, so I wanted to include that element as well. 


It all started with the glasses of the saxophone player, Paulo Alexandre Jorge and, the rest is the story of the hypnotic pattern I created to illustrate his playing.


The whole time the celloist Guilherme Águas Rodrigues was playing - and I was thinking on how this drawing should be - two words crossed my mind: water and earth. 
And those two, determined the materials and colors used. A musician with sensibility and talent. 


Here's the portrait of the drummer Nuno Morão, that I've drawn before. 
This time, in a sharp and focused mode.


The Guitarist Luís Lopes
This is not a drawing about the concert or a performance, it's a drawing about Luís Lopes himself. He's the type of person I imagine living in the countryside, in a beach location, in a cabin in the woods or in the middle of the concrete jungle, in the immensity of a big city.

I think he reunites opposite qualities, like uniting a group with great harmony, grace and sensibility and roaring his bricks out when it's needed. And I love that!

During the concert,  I wrote a poem for and about this musician. Each line in this drawing has a color with a reason to be, that is what's, sort of, described in this text:

The rocks and the shocks
The metal and the settle
The sand and the band
The skin and the gin
The coal and the soul
The wood and the mood
The leather and the feather
Is it brume, is it perfume?

I used metallic inks, charcoal, wooden colors, acrylics and shades related to the city concrete and nature. A dark side (brume) and a soft side (perfume).

A little chat we had before the concert and his sweater were the starting points for all this. But, in the end, this was nothing about what he was wearing or told me, but - deeply - about him.


Pandora's Box, André Gonçalves
Here playing with ADDAC Quarters, is André Gonçalves.

In my mind, was the idea of him taking sounds out of a Pandora's box, and not from a synthesizer, as it happened indeed. 

In ancient Greek Mythology, Pandora was the first woman on Earth. She opened her box, letting all the evils of the world loose. The only thing left inside the box was hope (Elpis or ελπίδα). 

Having been this concert - loud, massive and sonic, I linked it to this story, that I find very meaningful nowadays, having in mind the world's current situation. I have created my own fiction with this Pandora myth, but there could be plenty more possible associations!


Luiz Rocha, Maria do Mar, Adriano Orrù
The sweet talkative Luiz Rocha (bass clarinet), the bright Maria do Mar (violin) and Adriano Orrù's (double bass) gauge made of this trio, a true moment of communication in the festival!


The Night Owl, Paulo Galão
This is my drawing of the clarinet player, Paulo Galão. 
Here's the text I wrote during the concert about it:

This was the story 
of an owl that wore night
An owl that shown light
as the path of wisdom
Clarity over a thought 
Gravity on a bass lot.



Paulo Chagas & the Scandinavian Angel Trio, with Stephan Sieben, Adam PultzHåkon Berre, gave a full energy concert, and my drawing speed followed their rhythm. It was fast, fast, fast!


The bridge, Maria da Rocha
This regards to the second concert where the violinist, Maria da Rocha played in this festival - this time, a solo concert. She played violin over electronic sounds. And it seemed like she was playing "over the city moving" - I interpreted sounds of traffic, and in my mind, there were images of trains, bridges and tunnels involved. 

The whole time she played with the same body posture, and I kept thinking of her as a bridge (I thought of concrete and hence the gray) where sounds (colors) passed under. 

Doing this interpretation on my drawing, I also had in mind the architectonical use and function of bridges - they make a link possible between two distant points that weren't connected before.

All this was present when I made this drawing, and also that, for a musician who searches to be unconventional, I wanted to do a different portrait of what's expected. And on this point, it's handy to remember that in its traditional definition, a portrait shows the head or face of the person featured.


The piano player, Manuel Guimarães
During the concert I wrote in the back of this drawing:

A imensidão dos passos
Vai ao fundo do mundo

The immensity of the steps
Goes to the bottom of the world

That's it. Manuel Guimarães. Brilliant.


The Mask, Yaw Tembe
Sometime ago, I did a drawing of the trumpet player and visual artist, Yaw Tembe with texture and layers. Now, I wanted to do one with texture and sound (when you touch it) with the same material he used at this concert - aluminum foil. I also wanted to make a drawing in homage to his amazing masks (I LOVE THEM!) and I thought of the foil as a possible mask too.


Miguel Ivo Cruz
From the 46 musicians that played in the Variable Geometry Orchestra concert, Miguel Ivo Cruz is probably the musician whom I know the longest. Although I haven't seen him playing for ages, I was very very happy to draw him live, after all these years. This is a drawing of him with his six chord cello-lady, opening up a road of possibilities.


Doors, Simon Vincent
Simon Vincent, who happens to be also a piano player, is English, so I wanted to create the title's letters of this portrait with a British aesthetics influence. I was inspired by one of my English idols, Eric Gill (I know you graphic designers, out there, know what I mean!) - the creator behind the font Gill Sans.

This font was used in Penguin Book covers, in British Railways, in BBC's logo, by the British Government, in the music group Bloc Party's logo, in German traffic signs and by Spanish Government among many other examples, worldwide. It became a classic and also a trademark of the English spirit.

This concert was a high moment of the festival for me, because it made me fly.
I drew Simon Vincent's face, and I guess that was one of the few times I looked at the stage. The rest of the drawing, was made to the compass of the sounds he was sharing with us, with me just looking at the paper.

It was a mixture of electronic sound layers. I have no idea of which real noises were indeed used, but for me, this performance was all about closing and opening doors. And every time they opened, a roaring lion in the adventure of a jungle started, a course of water flowed and refreshed our minds, and some of the sounds were so spiritual, it made you believe they came from heaven.

This was about opportunities and mother nature with its striking force and Simon was a channel to the music.

Indeed, this festival represented a myriad of possibilities to unfold, of channels to be. Many feelings to match the musical variety presented. And, regarding the drawings I've made, it was definitely a festival of very different and strong personalities. 


2 comentários: