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It's almost Indian summer, as if summer didn't want to take its last bow...
In our memories, memories of concerts are beginning to fade, to float, except of course for those that have left their mark on us.
From my brief stay at the Météo festival in Mulhouse at the end of August, my memory retains above all the sunny figure of the Portuguese trumpeter now active in Sweden: Susana Silva Santos.
Her duo concert with guitarist Fred Frith at Motoco, a former industrial wasteland, followed by her solo at Église Sainte-Marie, were moments of great intensity, of the kind that comfort and nourish you, giving you that invigorating feeling that your whole being has entered into vibration, into intelligence with the musician's imagination, that you were in good hands, and that what vibrated had as much to do with the musician's generosity as with her liveliness of spirit and the richness of the territories explored.
This is what happened for me with Susana Santos Silva, discovered by Fred Frith in 2011 during a workshop in Portugal. The guitarist subsequently asked the young musician to join him in a women's orchestra he had assembled in Darmstadt. Fred Frith was immediately impressed by the vivacity and inventiveness of this musician. Since then, she has joined him in numerous constellations.
Susana Santos Silva was trained in classical music, then turned to jazz. She soon felt the need to break out of the mold, to "unlearn" in a way. When she found herself in a playing situation, and the formulas she'd learned at the conservatories came to her fingertips, she felt like she was betraying herself. She couldn't help but feel embarrassed, even ashamed. She had to find her own way, play her own music! Meeting Fred Frith was a real turning point for the trumpeter. It's worth remembering that the guitarist has trained many young improvisers over the years, teaching at Mills College (Oakland) and the Basel Academy of Music. Percussionist Camille Emaille has also benefited from the guitarist-pedagogue's enlightened advice.
Susana Santos Silva is an improviser, and she proclaims it loud and clear. This means that her imagination is only fired by the urgency of "here and now": what she likes is to play, to plunge into sound matter! When she finds herself in the situation of composing music, when she has to make choices, when she has to decide, and when she has the time to do so, everything becomes more complex, unless, of course, she retains the spontaneity of improvisation. In this, she is ultimately close to her English partner, who has always sought to rediscover the spontaneity of the compositional gesture, remembering that his first school was rock (Henri Cow, Art Bears, Skeleton Crew...), and collective improvisation.
The music played by the duo on August 27 at Motoco in Mulhouse swept the audience along in the hollows, fills and crests of an immense wave of sound, in which the two voices of Susana Santos Silva and Fred Frith became one. Fred Frith's guitar, linked to a host of pedals, has the gift of metamorphosis: sometimes organ, sometimes sanza, guitar, sampler... It's an orchestra in miniature, a meta-instrument! Susana Santos Silva's trumpet is not to be outdone, with its breathy, percussion-like playing, its voice inside the instrument and its many other playing modes. The musician says she took great pleasure in letting herself be carried away by the wave, to the point of having the sensation - at least that's what she confided to me after the concert - "of swimming, of flying"...
What happens when two musicians improvise for the first time? Often, the duo takes the form of a conversation, with moments when one or the other takes a step back. Fred Frith and Susana Santos Silva's duo took a different path. As the two musicians told me, they found themselves swept up in a narrative flow, a semblance of a story, a film script, so to speak, much to the delight of the trumpeter, who claims precisely this narrative aspect. "I love telling stories. To play music is to tell stories, because it's connected to our lives, and life is nothing but a story".
What story did Susana Santos Silva's solo tell us, the day after this aerial duet? Of course, each of us took our own story with us, so I'm not going to tell you mine - it's too deep in my memory as I write. I do remember, however, the slender silhouette of the musician moving with her instrument, on either side of the organ in Sainte-Marie church, on the balcony in front of the church. A mischievous and playful Susana Santos Silva had surprised the audience, facing the choir, by starting her solo behind them. Little by little, the bodies turned towards the church entrance, in search of the sound source that had taken them by surprise. I too remember searching for the embodiment of his sounds, watching the evolutions of this airy trumpet. I remember being enchanted by this solar, refined, inventive playing, always mobile and so alive!
The fleeting intensity of Susana Santos Silvas's solo was a fine introduction to the final concerts of the August 28 day at Météo, and especially toAnthony Laguerre 's organic composition "Myotis V", conceived for the Percussions de Strasbourg and an electronic device: here too, an epiphany of sound, but much more organized and structured.
Anne Montaron
Also listen to A l'improviste with duo Fred Frith and Susana Santos Silva, France musique.
