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Susana Santos Silva

Susana Santos Silva is a trumpeter, improviser and composer from Porto, Portugal. In the last years she has been considered by the international press as one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvised music. With a singular approach/voice that comes out of a comprehensive spectrum of influences, from classical and contemporary music to jazz and textural sound art, she is interested in stretching the boundaries of the instrument and in exploring new ways of expression within music. She leads her projects Impermanence and Life and Other Transient Storms (with Lotte Anker, Sten Sandell, Jon Fält and Torbjörn Zetterberg), and co-leads duos with Zetterberg (also in trio with Hampus Lindwall), Kaja Draksler, Jorge Queijo, Alexandra Nilsson, and a quartet with Christine Wodrascka, Christian Meaas Svendsen and Håkon Berre. She is also part of the LAMA trio, Torbjörn Zetterberg’s Och Den Stora Frågan and Coreto. She has been traveling, performing and recording with many amazing musicians for the last four years around Portugal, Spain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Italy, Greece, Egipt, Morocco, Ireland, UK, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, USA, Uruguay, Argentina, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia. “Susana Santos Silva is a extremely busy global musician who leads and co-leads various groups of different sizes, but always with her confident, nearly free approach as the focus. Her sound is liquid yet fiery, resonant, strong and flexible and her sharp command of the instrument is typically expressed in creative improvising situations where an ability both to blow torrents of sound and compose compact melodic statements – all entirely in the moment – make her a valuable asset in her many recording and performance roles.” Ken Micallef, NYC Jazz Record


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5
Album Review

Trespass Trio featuring Susana Santos Silva: Live In Oslo

Read "Live In Oslo" reviewed by John Sharpe


Although Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen is the toast of festival-goers across Europe for the variously sized Angles ensembles he fronts, which revel in sometimes exuberant, sometimes heart-rending riff-fuelled anthems, he also pursues somewhat more somber strands of expression. One involves the sort of adventurous sonic explorations heard on Animal Quotes (Relative Pitch, 2022). But another, and the one heard on Live In Oslo, finds him in small group settings designed to negotiate his often dirge-like compositions. For this ...

5
Album Review

Trespass Trio featuring Susana Santos Silva: Live in Oslo

Read "Live in Oslo" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Adding Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva to Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen's Trespass Trio for the 2018 Blowout Festival in Oslo, Norway was “a no-brainer." The inclusion of her trumpet, which features in ensembles led by Mats Gustafsson, Fred Frith, and Torbjörn Zetterberg, to name but a few, requires little or no thought. It is as if the four previous Clean Feed releases by the Trespass Trio, The Spirit Of Pitești (2017), Human Encore (2013), Bruder Beda (2012), and “---was there ...

Album Review

Susana Santos Silva, Fred Frith: Laying Demons To Rest

Read "Laying Demons To Rest" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Un unico ampio brano di quasi quarantadue minuti copre questo album inciso dal vivo a Mulhouse a fine agosto 2021. Vi trova posto la più lapalissiana, eloquente, paradigmatica improvvisazione senza rete che sia lecito immaginarsi, del tutto consequenziale per quello che è il rito di questo tipo di pratica musicale. Nonostante i due musicisti siano divisi da trent'anni (esatti: il chitarrista inglese è del '49, la trombettista portoghese del '79) e di conseguenza, del tutto prevedibilmente, da esperienze largamente differenti, ...

7
Album Review

Fred Frith - Susana Santos Silva: Laying Demons To Rest

Read "Laying Demons To Rest" reviewed by John Sharpe


It seems Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva is riding the crest of a wave, following acclaimed collaborations with the likes of saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Mats Gustafsson and pianist Kaja Draksler. It is a trajectory only likely to be reinforced by her alliance with British guitarist Fred Frith on Laying Demons To Rest. They've been playing together since at least 2018, with Silva an occasional guest with Frith's trio, as documented on Road (Intakt, 2021). But that in no way ...

4
Album Review

Elsa Bergman: Playon Crayon

Read "Playon Crayon" reviewed by John Eyles


Ever since 1967, when British composer Cornelius Cardew's 193-page graphic score Treatise was published, there has been controversy about the role graphic scores play in improvised music. Having worked on Treatise from 1963 to 1967, once it was published and discussed, Cardew wrote Treatise Handbook, published in 1971, which shed no light on how Treatise's complex graphics should be interpreted. The reason for the historical note is that with Playon Crayon Elsa Bergman may be following in Cardew's footprints. The ...

4
Album Review

Kaja Draksler, Susana Santos Silva: Grow

Read "Grow" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Music is sound, but is sound music? For John Cage, sound was indeed music. His avant-garde experiments with silence, environmental sounds, and prepared instruments opened up an entire world for discovery and others' improvisations. Even though he disliked the concept of improvisation, preferring chance to a musician's choices, our modern and post-modern free improvisation world has much for which to thank him. Enter the improvising duo of Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler, living in Copenhagen, and Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva ...

4
Album Review

Child Of Illusion: Khimaira

Read "Khimaira" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Nowadays, billionaires pay inordinate sums of money to leave Earth's atmosphere aboard rockets, just to float in space. The more modest of us can get the same effect listening to Khimaira by the trio Child Of Illusion. Recorded live in Stockholm, in 2018, this release follows the trio's initial eponymous offering from Clean Feed Records, released the same year. The trio is alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos from the United States, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva who lives in Sweden, and ...

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"There's always that moment... when you realize you've just been blown away by some talented shit. That's the moment I had after being pierced by Susana Santos Silva and her hour long epic debut, Devil's Dress."
Stephan Moore

"With her impressive 2011 debut as a leader “Devil’s Dress” and involvement in various European projects, highly-educated trumpeter Susana Santos Silva looms as a nascent voice within progressive-jazz circles” Glenn Astarita

"Silva's quintet has proven itself among the ranks of adventurous modern jazz” Daniel Lehner

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Playon Crayon

Bergman Inspelningar
2023

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Live in Oslo

Clean Feed Records
2023

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Live In Oslo

Clean Feed Records
2023

buy

Khimaira

Relative Pitch Records
2022

buy

Grow

Intakt Records
2022

buy

Warmth

From: Devil's Dress
By Susana Santos Silva

Devil's Dress

From: Devil's Dress
By Susana Santos Silva

Videos

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