Portuguese double bass player and composer André Carvalho’s sixth album as bandleader, Of Fragility and Impermanence, relates to his feelings as a new father, revealing “a love I had never known, radiant yet fragile – a beauty inseparable from the fear of losing it, or falling short”. The album reflects Carvalho’s feelings when he was away from his family, when «the quiet witnessing of ageing and absence» taught him about life’s transience, its hidden depths, and its sudden revelations.
Of Fragility and Impermanence explores the duality and the tension between fragility and impermanence. Carvalho makes it clear that fragility is no weakness; it mirrors our complexity. Vulnerability walks beside it, opening us to wonder, to risk and self-discovery, to the ties that bind, and allowing us to grow, to feel, and to embrace. Impermanence flows through every moment, every note, every pause, every texture celebrates the fleeting, unrepeatable instant that unfolds in time and vanishes.
Of Fragility and Impermanence is a twelve-movement, lyrical, and often quite melancholic suite tied to the longing for a primordial sense of fullness, the fleeting beauty of everyday gestures, and the acceptance of constant change.
Carvalho assembled a quintet with unconventional instrumentation and unpredictable, subtle, chamber-like sounds – José Soares on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, cellist Raquel Reis, pianist Samuel Gapp, electronics player João Hasselberg, and Carvalho on the double bass. This quintet allows Carvalho to explore the tension between composition and improvisation, silence and density, clarity and noise, the personal and the universal. It also blurs the line between what is planned and what is spontaneous, as well as between modern jazz, contemporary music, and experimental sound art. Carvalho’s commanding, deep-toned bowing work deepens its melancholic atmosphere, while Hasselberg’s subtle, imaginative electronics intensify its vulnerability. The album was developed during an artistic residency at Centro Musibéria in Serpa in April 2025.
Carvalho incorporates into this meditative suite recordings of his child and his partner, refers to the fictional character of Kanji Watanabe in Akira Kurosawa’s film Ikiru (1952), about a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning, and uses Heraclitus saying “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”, to and stress his perspective about life. These clever references enrich Of Fragility and Impermanence and make it a most beautiful, moving, and, obviously, a personal meditation about life. It embraces life’s most tender and fragile moments, which keep inspiring us to keep on and endure its fleeting, transient nature.
Eyal Hareuveni
André Carvalho (double bass), José Soares (alto saxophone, bass clarinet), Raquel Reis (cello), Samuel Gapp (piano), João Hasselberg (electronics)
