País Distante

João Paulo Esteves da Silva’s new album, País Distante, marks a doubly significant milestone in the Portuguese music scene: on the one hand, it celebrates 30 years of recordings by the composer and pianist, whose debut album under his own name, Serra sem Fim, dates back to 1995; on the other, it inaugurates the new Artway Jazz catalogue, an imprint of Artway Editions that promises to become a reference point for Portuguese jazz.
Recorded at La Buissonne studio in the south of France, País Distante features a newly formed quartet, with Julian Argüelles on tenor and soprano saxophones, Rodrigo Correia on double bass and José Salgueiro on drums. The repertoire includes both compositions by Esteves da Silva and a series of collective improvisations with a strong compositional focus. Moving between Portuguese jazz, European jazz, avant-garde jazz, classical music and rock, the album can be seen as an extraordinarily concise synthesis of the composer and pianist’s vast musical universe. Esteves da Silva is regarded by his peers as one of the most original figures in European music in recent decades.