The Portuguese, Lisbon-based No Project trio is a free improvising trio comprised of musicians that usually feel more at home with modern jazz and other structured forms of modern music. The trio feature the classically trained pianist João Paulo Esteves da Silva, known for being the pianist of choice of many popular Portuguese singers, double bass player Nelson Cascais, who leads his own ensembles including one dedicated to the music of Charles Mingus, and versatile drummer João Lencastre, who leads his own group Communion (with American sax player Dave Binney and pianist Jacob Sacks and bass player Thomas Morgan),  a musicians who have played already any genre and style, from avant-garde to reggae and metal. The trio claims that it do not have any agenda – no project – only to let the music flow out of the moment. The trio «Vol. II» album was recorded recorded in Timbuktu Studio in Lisbon on September 2014, two years after the trio released its debut album «Vol. 1» (JACC Records, 2012),

«Vol. II» offers eight untitled improvisations. The first ones sound unhurried and open-ended ones, as if all the three musicians still search for a unifying form of interplay. The trio tries a dense form on «I» and «III», a minimalist, sparse one on «II», and even a chamber-jazz texture on «IV», but only sporadically it crystallizes into a cohesive interplay. It establishes its own interplay on «VI», still sparse and delicate, but now it is more focused and more emphatic and conversational. No Project reaches its climax on the 21-minutes of «VIII». This piece is the most bold and versatile one, offers enough time and space to the trio to calibrate into each other flow of ideas, and succeeds to encompass all the sonic terrains explored on previous improvisations.

Eyal Hareuveni

João Paulo Esteves da Silva (p), Nelson Cascais (b), João Lencastre (dr)