‘Luiz Vaz 73’ in the CAM Collection
In the centenary year of the birth of the multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, curator, critic and essayist Ernesto de Sousa, the CAM, in collaboration with the Foundation’s Music Department and musicologist Jaime Reis, presented on the stage of the Grande Auditório the mixed-media work Luiz Vaz 73 (1975–1981), a project by Ernesto de Sousa (Lisbon, 1921–1988) and Jorge Peixinho (Montijo, 1940–Lisbon, 1995).
The presentation also marks the incorporation of the physical work and associated documentation of the two artists in the CAM Collection (2019), thus completing a cycle of works of conservation (restoration, digitalisation of analogue slides and digital transcription of magnetic tapes), study and material and historical reconstitution of the work.
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Excerpt of the presentation of the work ‘Luiz Vaz 73’- Stage of the Grande Auditório, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2 June 2021
The title Luiz Vaz 73 evokes the work Os Lusíadas [The Lusiads], by Luiz Vaz de Camões, published 400 years previously in Lisbon, in 1573. The epic poem inspired the composition of a work of electronic music – an electronic ‘symphonic poem’ – with the same title, produced by Jorge Peixinho in Ghent, at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music, between 1973 and 1974. In 1975, Jorge Peixinho and Ernesto de Sousa begun working on the ‘musical/visual involvement’ Luiz Vaz 73, based on four of the ten cantos of the poem (I, III, IX and X).
The work Luiz Vaz 73 (inv. 19E1908) is simultaneously a spatial project and a visual and sound project, based on a structural coincidence and simultaneity between sound/music and images/projections, featuring live instrumental improvisation (acoustic and non-conventional instruments, most of them the originals used by Jorge Peixinho) by the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, founded by the composer in 1970.
This re-presentation followed the script of the 1976 project, presented in National Gallery of Contemporary Art of Belém, which involved the visual collaboration of Fernando Calhau in the conception of the space, and featured GMCL members Ana Castanhito (harp), Jorge Sá Machado (cello), José Sá Machado (violin), João Pereira Coutinho (flute), Luís Gomes (clarinet) and Ricardo Mateus (viola), under the direction of Jaime Reis, who was also responsible for the spatial transmission of Peixinho’s electronic music.
Rita Fabiana
Curator
Luiz Vaz 73
The work was presented in two sessions on 2 June 2021, accompanied by a leaflet, that can be downloaded for free.
Download leaflet (647 KB)