Improfest – solo performance

# IMPROFEST PORTO

## Books to Listen To

### August 29 · Livraria Trama · Porto

What happens when a musician randomly chooses a book, reads a short passage, and transforms what they have just read into music?

On August 29, Improfest takes over Livraria Trama in Porto, proposing an experience in which literature and improvisation meet in a direct and unpredictable way.

The rule is simple: each musician chooses a book from the shelves of the bookstore. They open it, read a passage aloud to the audience and, from that text, begin their performance.

The book is not treated as a theme or illustration. The text becomes a kind of open score. A word may trigger a rhythm; an image may suggest a texture; a sentence may provoke a structure; an idea may become a gesture, a noise, a silence or a movement. The musician does not attempt to “represent” what they have read, but to discover what that fragment can produce when it passes through sound.

Every thirty minutes, a new musician, a new book and a new possibility for listening.

The program brings together six artists from different backgrounds and practices: Luam Clarindo, Paulo Hartmann, Wouter Jaspers, Bruno Pereira, Rodrigo Constanzo and Cardeal Pölätüo.

The journey begins at 5:00 PM with Luam Clarindo and his research into percussion, improvisation and electronics. At 5:30 PM, Paulo Hartmann presents his approach to prepared guitar and sound objects. At 6:00 PM, Wouter Jaspers brings his investigations into electronics, radio, field recordings, interference and self-built instruments. At 6:30 PM, Bruno Pereira shifts the experience toward voice and body, exploring the possibilities of vocal performance and improvisation. At 7:00 PM, Rodrigo Constanzo works at the intersection of composition, electronics, instruments and interactive systems. At 7:30 PM, Cardeal Pölätüo closes the sequence, moving the procedure into territories of experimentation, atmosphere and sonic abstraction.

The result is impossible to predict.

There will be no two identical concerts: the books selected, the passages read, the musicians’ reactions and the decisions made during each performance form a chain of events that exists only in that particular moment.

The proposal establishes a direct relationship with the very nature of Livraria Trama. A bookstore is an archive of possibilities: thousands of stories, ideas, voices and worlds coexisting on its shelves. Improvisation operates in much the same way. The musician enters a territory of possibilities and must decide, in real time, what to do with what they find.

Between one page and the next, between a word and a noise, Improfest Porto turns the bookstore into an instrument.

*IMPROFEST PORTO — BOOKS TO LISTEN TO*

August 29
Livraria Trama · Porto

16:00 – Doors Open
16:20 – Henrique Fernandes
16:40 – Luam Clarindo
17:00 – Paulo Chagas
17:20 – Paulo Hartmann
17:40 – Wouter Jaspers

18:00 – Interval for Book Launch

18:40 – Bruno P.
19:00 – Rodrigo Constanzo
19:20 – Cardeal Pölätüo

19:40 – Raffles

Each musician. One book. One passage. One improvisation.

Free admission.