Jazz Articles about Pedro Melo Alves

About Pedro Melo Alves

Radio & Podcasts

Pedro Melo Alves, James Brandon Lewis Quartet & Ohad Talmor Trio

by Maurice Hogue
October 27, 2021

Here's another of those almost-all-music editions of One Man's Jazz, with just an intro at the top of each hour. The music includes samplings from new releases by Portuguese drummer/percussionist Pedro Melo Alves & his Ominiae Large Ensemble, bassists Juan Bayon from Buenos Aires and Tomo Jacobson from Copenhagen, and several saxophonists: James Brandon Lewis Nick Mazzarella, Darius Jones, Patrick Shiroishi, Lena Bloch & Feathery, Loren Stillman (with pianist Russ Lossing), and Ohad Talmor. Enjoy! Playlist James Brandon ...

Album Review

Pedro Melo Alves: Lumina

Read "Lumina" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
September 21, 2021

On the burgeoning Portuguese jazz scene, drummer Pedro Melo Alves is becoming one of the more prolific artists. The multiple award-winning composer has accumulated international praise for four unique recordings in the space of a year. On Lumina he has extended his existing ensemble and assembled the Omniae Large Ensemble of twenty-two musicians for a project commissioned by the Guimarães Jazz Festival. Melo Alves' Clean Feed Records debut was a quartet outing (with vocalists), In Igma (2020), a ...

Album Review

Pedro Melo Alves: In Igma

Read "In Igma" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 4, 2021

Jazz has had a presence in Portugal since the mid-1920s but had found itself in decline from the 1970s. The revolutionary jazz scene in Portugal, circa the 2010s, has produced a profusion of rising stars. Violist Ernesto Rodrigues, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, Orquestra Jazz De Matosinhos, and the Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble are among those who have emerged as influential beyond the Portuguese border. Two driving forces in that country's improvised music—drummer-percussionist Pedro Melo Alves and experimental guitarist Abdul Moimême—team ...

Album Review

Pedro Melo Alves: In Igma

by Troy Dostert
August 4, 2020

Since his remarkable debut as a leader in 2017, Omniae Ensemble (Nischo Records), drummer and composer Pedro Melo Alves has quickly established himself as a vital force in the Portuguese jazz scene. With an uncompromising sensibility equally committed to avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical music, not to mention the jazz-rock experimentalism of his work with Rite of Trio, Alves' hybridity is his calling card, and it's a crucial characteristic of the new breed of creative jazz coming out of Portugal. ...