Amplitude Danças Ocultas & Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras

• 1 Heptimo 05:00
• 2 Diatonico 02:32
• 3 Danca d'alba 04:31
• 4 Bulgar 03:32
• 5 Tarab 05:34
• 6 O Diabo Tocador 06:28
• 7 Pandora 05:30
• 8 Tardes de Bolonha 03:17
• 9 Alento 05:47
• 10 Esse Olhar 05:47
• 11 Danca II 03:11
• 12 Nocturno das 7 05:20
• Total Runtime 56:29

Info for Amplitude

“Amplitude” is the extent of a vibration. For two years Danças Ocultas and Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras had shared this sound dimension in numerous common stage performances, which in May 2015 culminated in highly acclaimed concerts in the two most prestigious Portuguese concert halls: Sala Suggia in Casa da Música, Oporto and CCB Grande Auditório in Lisbon. Portuguese stars Carminho, Dead Combo and Rodrigo Leão were the special guests who contributed a lot to transmit the musical magic to the sold out auditoriums. Now, with the live recording of these two concerts, the magic will be extended to a wider audience.

The orchestra arrangements of Danças Ocultas’ classics are the perfect scenery for the dialogue with the invited guests. The fact that Dead Combo and Rodrigo Leão come from instrumental music facilitates the communication between the different artistic worlds. On the other hand with fado singer Carminho there is the completing of a circle: “O Diabo Tocador”, a theme from the „Tarab“ album, was inspired by a labourers’ song collected by ethnomusicologist Michele Giacometti. Carminho’s unique voice re-transforms the instrumental piece into a song with powerful lyrics.

António Vassalo Lourenço, conductor of the Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras and intimous conoisseur of the music of Danças Ocultas, had enthusiastically embraced this special project right from the beginning. The arrangements for string orchestra only amplify what is already there, giving a new dimension to the melodies, the counterpoints and harmonies explored by the original quatuor of four diatonic accordions.

For 25 years Danças Ocultas have been touring and carrying their universal Portuguese music across the world. With Amplitude and Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras they want to invite the largest possible number of listeners to their magic journey of sounds.

Artur Fernandes, diatonic accordion
Francisco Miguel, diatonic accordion
Filipe Cal, diatonic accordion
Filipe Ricardo, diatonic accordion

Danças Ocultas
The diatonic accordion (named as ‘concertina’ in Portugal) is an instrument created in the first half of XIX century, later worked to perfection, by several European instrument makers and today it echoes memories coming from a different musical ambience: a time before the record and the radio inventions. But it continues being a ‘dream machine’ ready to invent possible futures and making senses.

In May 1989, Artur Fernandes, Filipe Cal, Filipe Ricardo and Francisco Miguel had a dream to look for and worked their musical performance skills meanwhile they studied the possibilities of taking this instrument away from folklore music ways, accepting what then was known as ” the concertina will”, but writing a new music for it. This was the time that led the band to its name and to its first record, Danças Ocultas (1996), with a repertory on which predominate Artur Fernandes compositions.

After that, came a adventuring time, less ingenuous and more artistic, resulting from the continuous contacts with other performers, from experiences on stage, from the first travels and partnerships, motivating the change of the group into a sharing creativity nucleus and leading to the recording of “Ar” the second record which affirms the beginning of a self musical grammar and shows some technical innovations like the use of a specially built “bass concertina”.

Since then the band has been experiencing the links between that musical grammar and a more universal and trans-cultural view of the musical phenomenon as well as the contemporaneous cultural ways. This concept allowed the band to often perform within scenic arts, namely in Paulo Ribeiro choreographies for which the band composed original music, as well as the repertoire of Pulsar, its third record, Pulsar (2004), after which all the compositions and musical arrangements start to be signed collectively. Sound, rhythm and harmony games between the past and the future, making sense, in a dialog with contemporary aesthetic.

In October 2009, a new work was published: Its name is Tarab, an arabic word meaning a state of elevation, celebration and spiritual communion that is struck both by the performer and by the listener during a well done musical act. Tarab is ecstasy. Tarab is the goal of music as well as of those who practice it. Tarab notes now the refocusing of the group, a dynamic reinterpretation of their common path and a new affirmation of music as a universal language of brotherhood.

This album contains no booklet.