Ravenna Escaleira is a Portuguese, Lisbon-based sax player who has developed her musical language while playing in the streets of her hometown, Porto, and in various cities in Brazil, Spain, and Italy, «an experience lived on the skin». Her musical language is a process of self-discovery, and extends from music to poetry and the visual arts. She has used the pseudonym RVN to explore electronics and raw noise to suggest almost ambient textures, and has played in violinist-conductor Ernesto Rodrigues’ Variable Geometry Orchestra.
The aptly titled Vagabondage is Escaleira’s first solo album released by a label, after eight solo albums released on her Bandcamp page. It was recorded in three different places in Lisbon: SMUP (Sociedade Musical União Paredense), Desterro neighborhood, and the cultural center Casa do Comum. Escaleira also plays the electric bass and piano.
Escaleira describes the album as coming from her «idle wandering through the city and my inner relationship with it – where the unexpected takes me – I take it – desire driven. Assuming the discourse between the ruins of my memory and my present idleness, I seek to let the events influence my choices in a way they unfold from this relation between my personal history and reflected in my music through my interaction with the city».
The four pieces of Vagabondage, especially the opening, 25 minutes of «Girl Crazy», where she plays on the sax and the heavily distorted, electric bass, capture the urgent, rough, and uncompromising essence of Escaleira’s merciless sound. It is expressed with deep lyricism that is close to the most aching ballad, and designed by the acoustic space it inhabits. The following «Fortress» focuses on building walls of distorted, noisy walls made of deep-toned bass sounds. The short, solo sax «Naked» reveals the seminal influence of Peter Brötzmann on her approach and sound. The last solo piano piece, «Fallen Angels», is a lyrical, angry ballad, but expressed with similar, urgent, and powerful emotional intensity.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ravenna Escaleira (saxophone, electric bass, piano)
