LATEST NEWS
Mário Laginha Receives Prestigious Recognition from Berklee's Piano Department
12.10.2024
In December 2024, Mário Laginha was the first featured artist for Berklee’s Piano Department's Spotlight Series, which pays tribute to a selected artist each semester.
Latest Edition Records Releases: 'Jangada' & 'Atlântico'
2.02.2022
Jangada, meaning raft, originates from the idea of ‘picking up pieces of driftwood and binding them together to form a whole.’ It’s a beautiful metaphor that describes the organic collation of influences that are channelled into the music. Consisting of eleven original compositions by Mario, the album is harmonically rich with a delicate warmth. There’s also something very exploratory and searching, a sense of adventure and impulsive restlessness. With Bernardo Moreira on bass and Alexandre Frazão on drums.
Atlântico is the second album from the European jazz super-trio of Julian Argüelles, Mário Laginha and Helge Andreas Norbakken. Effortless, flowing and lyrical, the trio melds together worlds of folk song, powerful African groove with the American tradition and a sophisticated European jazz sensibility.
Mário Laginha at UK Jazz News
2.21.2022
Jangada shines a spotlight on Laginha himself. The eleven pieces are all the pianist’s own compositions, giving full expression to his wide ranging inspirations. The opener, Short Shore, cycles through a series of moods giving tasters of different sides of the trio’s musical personality. It starts in a reflective mood, rich singing chords hanging, before the piano breaks them down, explores and develops the harmony with evolving abstraction. Then an infectiously rhythmic motif develops, subtly nudged along by Alexandre Frazão’s drums, and a beguiling melody bursts through doubled by Laginha’s left hand and Bernardo Moreira’s bass. The piano solo begins with dazzling, flowing lines that fuse into melodic shapes, and evolves into a swinging rocky vamp, with a burning modal workout. It’s a thrilling ride that sets the scene for the music to come.