“Compositions for Double Bass” is an album that calls for attentive listening. It brings together four pieces by different authors, dating from a time span that goes from 2005 to 2022, two shorter and two lasting more than 15 minutes. To open, the solemnity of “MPK” (initials that mean “Memoriam for Peter Kowald”), for double bass and electronics, piece by Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris, composer, sound designer and pedagogue, who without directly emulating or quoting Kowald, pays heartfelt homage to the German bassist and improviser who physically left us in 2002.

Assuming that his practice has changed since then, this is a revisitation of memories and friendships that marked the path of the Greek, in a piece performed here by Almeida using alternately the pizzicato and the bow, in conjunction with electronic elements. This is followed by the chamber music and technically demanding “Walk”, a composition written by Michal Osowski in 2007 and revised in 2020. It is inspired by the act of walking, consisting of sections with greater or lesser interconnection. The second part of the piece takes on a more meditative character, alternating between more ethereal passages and more agitated ones, exploring the harmonics based on the different techniques for using the bow.

"Mangled Counteract”, the shortest composition on the album, is written by drummer, composer and improviser Pedro Melo Alves. A notable debugging exercise, it is based on the irregular repetition of sound micromotives, coming from a phase in which Portuguese was obsessed with exploring rhythmic pendulums. Using only the bow, and after an introduction that evokes a certain awakening, the piece enters a kind of parallel reality, with a minimalist pulse and an unstable ostinato, which evolves into something ritualistic. In a sequence that seems logical from a sound point of view, the album ends with “A Ritual, More or Less Defined”, for double bass, tape and live electronics, by the Dutchman Friso van Wijck, drummer and composer who has been sharing with Gonçalo Almeida various formations and projects, from jazz closer to the norm (or not so much...) to freer forms. The title of this composition alludes to the different notations used in the compositional process, from the more conventional to graphic scores. The result is the various layers – organic and electronic – that interact bi-univocally, in a permanent cross feed, creating a piece with an obscure and mysterious ambience, which is slowly transmuted." by Antonio Branco on jazz.pt

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