About
Rodrigo Pinheiro is a pianist, improviser and composer based in Lisbon. Over more than two decades he has become a central figure in the Portuguese free improvisation, experimental music and free jazz scene, notably as a member of RED trio. His recordings, released on labels such as Clean Feed and NoBusiness, have been singled out among the best jazz albums of the year by publications including The Wire, The New York City Jazz Record, Público and Jazz.pt.
He began his musical studies at the age of five at the conservatory in Covilhã, Portugal. For many years he has studied with pianist Anne Kaasa, and classical training remains a constant reference in his work. He deepened his study of improvisation with Carlos Zíngaro, Peter Kowald, Günter Müller, Nuno Rebelo and Patrick Brennan. He has collaborated with musicians such as John Butcher, Axel Dörner, Nate Wooley, Joe McPhee, Thomas Lehn, Lotte Anker, Mattias Ståhl, Keir Neuringer and Peter Evans, performing in venues and festivals across Europe and the United States. He also writes music for film and theater.
His current projects include the quintet hyper.object, the trios Linae and Cloud at Rest, Rhizome — a trio with cellist Daniel Levin and double bassist Hernâni Faustino — Transition Unit, and a duo with Pedro Carneiro, alongside his ongoing solo work. In 2022 he founded Phonogram Unit, a Lisbon-based label dedicated to experimental, improvised and electro-acoustic music.
Press
The music they weave is urgent, dynamic and intensely propulsive, but it does not neglect, at times, a more contemplative component and attentiveness to silence.
An incredibly strong album, one that you can listen hundreds of time without getting bored.
The entirety of this beautiful CD is covered in a veil of melancholy emanating from Rodrigo Pinheiro’s pianism, which extends to even the most vibrant interplay.
The ultimate effect of these pieces combines the perpetuity of great architecture with the shorthand communication of a friend, a dance between the instantaneous and the eternal.
One recent masterwork is the brilliantly counterintuitive Inter.Independence by the Pinheiro-led quintet Hyper.Object.
His rumbling presence provides more sonic foundation than authoritarian direction, with subsections of horns and percussion swirling and subsiding like a ballet performed atop a mesa by a troupe of tornadoes.
Rodrigo Pinheiro and Pedro Carneiro are two virtuosos in a good way, that is, they put the great technique they have at the service of music.
Rodrigo Pinheiro’s work resides at the intersection of free improvisation and high modernism, with quicksilver meetings of design, impulse and chance.
The role played by Pinheiro is fundamental, with his very characteristic pianism emerging as the flowering of each situation.
This is a record of brilliant composers of the moment, experienced practitioners of improvisation who don't need to correct what was left behind.
Among many free pianists, there’s a certain tendency to bombast, a trait which Pinheiro happily lacks.
The pianist brings a classically informed elegance and harmonic expansiveness that works beautifully alongside Lencastre’s gutsy yet spacious drumming and the leader’s controlled alto fire.
The entire performance is not unlike a futuristic arboretum or sanctuary for robots. A dream Philip K. Dick once had.
Pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro alternates ferocious fusillades of notes that skirt the density of white noise with more calculated constructions.
Pianist Pinheiro's imagination shooting off into brief, blazing ideas like rockets in a deep blue sky.
This is jazz at its very best.
At the keyboard, Rodrigo Pinheiro accentuates the percussive characteristics of his instrument, avoiding tonal hegemony, often delving around the innards to dampen the resonance.