Artists
Bernardo Sassetti
Biography
Bernardo Sassetti was born in Lisbon, in June 1970. At the age of 9 he started studying classical piano with Professor Maria Fernanda Costa and later with Professor António Menéres Barbosa. He also attended Academia dos Amadores de Música. Dedicated to Jazz, he studied with Zé Eduardo, Horace Parlan and Sir Roland Hanna. [more]
Motion - Bernardo Sassetti Trio
Bernardo Sassetti is, undoubtedly, one of the most important Portuguese Jazz musicians nowadays. Since the eighties, he is leaving a strong personal imprint in Portuguese Jazz, after being considered by many as one of the most promising young players in a new generation of local musicians – the first ones in Portugal to take Jazz as a professional career.
Bernardo Sassetti Trio is probably the most stable Portuguese jazz formation actually in activity. Recently they celebrated their 14th anniversary.
Bernardo Sassetti, Carlos Barretto and Alexandre Frazão have many parallel projects and are with most certainty three of the most talented Portuguese jazz musicians. Before they form their Trio they performed together in different bands, with many other musicians. As a Trio they learned what Sassetti describes as “a collective conscience about time and space”. They have a perfect knowledge about where to place themselves at the jazz scene, and that place was built together over the last 14 years. In this Trio the communication and empathy are so strong that each of them can predict which way the others are going and so they can prepare their immediate and fair response.
In “Motion”, Bernardo Sassetti, Carlos Barretto and Alexandre Frazão interpret stories through three different instruments which complement each other in a subtle way. A simultaneous search for “the maximum representation of fiction, the musical dialogue, the artistic provocation”, creating new paths in their music.
The profound knowledge that each of them has of their two other partners, the way they work together and the great quality music they perform, their personality, all this could never turn out in a sterile and inert jazz, with no place for surprise.
Unreal
Known for his film soundtracks as much as for his straight-ahead jazz recordings, Portuguese pianist and composer Bernardo Sassetti has with the new "Unreal: Sidewalk Cartoon" his most ambitious work ever, comprising the two aspects of his musical output, from the mainstream to the cinematic and beyond.
In every aspect: the disk is accompanied by a surprising and beautiful book of photo assemblages (he did it all himself, photography and digital manipulation), and the music tell us a story in an almost narrative way, with lots of non-sense and humour, gathering musicians from both the jazz and the classical contemporary music scenes. [more]
Discography
