JANUARY · 2024
Ípsilon, Público, PT
****1/2
In a monumental project, the pianist and composer creates in A Body as Listening a magnificent work aimed at disruption.
Gonçalo Frota
JANUARY · 2024
Rimas e Batidas, PT
Tremendous performance at Culturgest in Lisbon (...) And if her compositional virtues have long been evident, her performing brilliance is just as noteworth: there are moments when she seems to dance at the piano or physically collapse, such is the strength of what the now living body of the piano gives her.
(...) everything is in its right place, everything is excellent.
Rui Miguel Abreu
2024
Jazz.pt, PT
Every time we try to describe what happened, the words are too short; every time we try to explain what happened, the words get too long and presumptuous. This is because Joana Sá has such a rare artistic integrity.
Gonçalo Falcão
JANUARY · 2024
Passos na Floresta - Blog, PT
This [the multidimensional project ‘a body as listening – resonant cartography of music (im)materialities’] is a highly innovative project, and it's sure to make history. Nothing like this has ever been attempetd in Portugal. It's that big, giant. Rui Eduardo Paes
JANUARY · 2024
Passos na Floresta - Blog, PT
[About the book ‘a body as listening – resonant cartography of music (im)materialities’]
It is immediately clear that the reader-listeners (...) have to dive in, immerse themselves into a philosophical poem about the body (physical, instrumental, musical, listening) and space (...).
In the disassembly and prismatic deconstruction that is carried out, the concept seems to gain greater relevance, but it turns out that Joana Sá's conceptual vector is, from the ground up, a praxis: what is at stake are her immanences, her (im)materialities, her affections. In this sense, what we have here is an applied philosophy of music, a utility. For us, it allows us to better understand the reasons and resolutions of what we listen. For Joana Sá, it is a way of understanding herself and of defining what she strives for. In ‘The Sound Experience’ [another book analyzed in this article] these strands are separate, in ‘A Body as Listening...’ they are one and that is one of the reasons for the brilliance of this volume.
Rui Eduardo Paes
OCTOBER · 2016
Público, PT
Joana Sá's piano is played with the whole body : today and tomorrow at Teatro Maria Matos, the pianist-composer closes a trilogy that imposed her as one of the most stimulating creators of contemporary Portuguese music.
(Photo on the front cover of the daily newspaper)
Gonçalo Frota
NOVEMBER · 2013
Downtown Music Gallery, NY (USA)
In my opinion Joana Sa is the most remarkable artist of any kind to come out of Portugal in recent years. Meticulous, creative, open, she build her own language as composer and pianist. This is not just a solo piano album, here she's going through her normal process of exploring the limits of the instrument and her imagination either using the instrument as a drum, electronic device or just the melodic part of it. Uncategorized as all of her work, "In Praise of Desorder" is something not to be missed at all.
Bruce Lee Gallanter
NOVEMBER · 2011
NMZ Neue Musik Zeitung, DE
This is the first release from Köln’s blinker - Marke für Rezentes label. The challenge now is to surpass it.
Martin Hüfner
DECEMBER · 2011
NMZ Neue Musikzeitung, DE
New sounds, new images. There are not so many films in which musical and cinematic performance are so interrelated and mutually supportive. Pianist Joana Sá's performance is incredibly exciting, spectacular and, at the same time, realised without gimmickry. Film art as one would wish to see it more often. A dazzling sound journey through various keyboard instruments. Grandiose. Martin Hüffner
SEPTEMBER · 2011
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, USA
This is late high modernism at its best.
It is a work of great charm. It is sound poetry. It is one of the most successful and attractive high modern keyboard works that I've heard in years. Joana Sa must be appreciated if you want to know where modernism has gone. It's here.
Grego Applegate Edwards
DECEMBER · 2013
All About Jazz, USA
One of best new discoveries of this year. A highly original Portuguese composer- pianist who weave abstract musical textures, poetic texts and images into a mesmerizing work. Check also on this label another exceptional album of Sá with guitarist Luís José Martins, Almost a Song, a collection of loose recipes that may be, and most likely may not, songs”,
Eyal Hareuveni
MARCH · 2014
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, USA
Joana's music has a flow to it that after hearing a few times seems unique but somehow appropriate. The music has a natural quality that is ultra- modernistic nonetheless. What strikes me in her music, especially here, is the mastery of avant techniques harnessed to a sureness of purpose that brings together aspects of the classical avant and the free-improvisatory schools. All clearly and movingly holds together as compositional.
I am especially impressed with how this music after several hearings continually stimulates the hearer's imagination with a master sound-painter's expert touch and larger vision. Nothing sounds random and yet there is continuous sound-invention without much at all in the way of repetition.” “In Praise of Disorder has a monumental elocutionary eloquence to it that puts it on rarified turf. Anyone with an interest in the avant garde today should listen closely.
Grego Applegate Edward
JANUARY · 2014
Le son du grisly, FR
For those who were hypnotised by the haunting music of Miguel Gomes's Tabu, this ‘In praise of Disorder’ is highly recommended. Joana Sá's multi-faceted approach (film music, improvisation, Cage piano concertos, etc.) is captivating. After listening to this solo recording, we can add: bewitching’.
‘The Portuguese pianist's universe is vast and infinite. It's a realm of blends and fusions. Voices interweave. They whisper and murmur. The piano is anxious here, bursting elsewhere. It criss-crosses the gust, stopping abruptly. It is violence and only touches gentleness from faraway. We can refuse this temptation. Or surrender and give in to it. Like a nightmare, the tensions amplify, erasing the pianist's playing. Here, the evident is sizzled, nibbled at and damaged. Here, bells and sirens like to startle the listener. Here, disorder is consumed freely and with no caution. And we love it. Passionately, intensely.
Luc Bouquet
OCTOBER · 2013
Ípsilon, Público, PT
****
[In Praise of Disorder]
Joana Sá is never one to chose the past of least resistance in her work, constantly placing herself in the line of fire. But it is in that singular breath, in which disorder can turn into a despairing breathlessness (as is the case in the superb title track), that she tests the limits of her instrument and conceives music that takes chances and is unafraid of plunging into the unknown. Listening to Joana Sá is still the privilege of accessing an autonomous musical language, one that is bold and stubbornly intent on calling itself into question.
An almost continual cause for wonder and amazement, In Praise of Disorder is the second piece in a solo trilogy which, it is plain to see, asserts her as one of the most original ‘voices’ of our time.
Gonçalo Frota
2013
Jazz.pt, PT
This music stirs, grows, disturbs, moves. It summons different emotional states, and does so with unwavering elegance. For this disorder all there shall be nothing but praise.
Nuno Catarino
SEPTEMBER · 2011
Ípsilon, Público, PT
Tonight, Teatro Maria Matos, in Lisbon, hosts the first major live presentation of one of the most fascinating records released this year. In a modern fable in which the dream and fantasy world of Lewis Carrol and its Alice is balanced, with rare skilfulness, with the universes of contemporary music and improvisation, Joana Sá’s new project sets her up as one of the most vibrant and talented artists in the country.
Rodrigo Amado
2011
Ípsilon, Público, PT
*****
[through this looking glass]
With flawless execution, Joana Sá uses a prepared piano, a small toy piano, electronics and multiple gadgets to build a powerful narrative which evokes connections between poetry and music, between the classical and the ultra contemporary.There’s a sensibility and energy to this work that are deeply personal, something that calls upon the magic associated with Alice’s world. By naming one of the pieces “Freedom means little. What I desire still has no name”, Joana Sá gives away what might be the defining clue to her future work. It will most certainly be bright.
Rodrigo Amado
Jazz.pt, PT
****
[through this looking glass]
The music is beautiful sophisticated, irreverent and inventive. A real pearl born out of that corner of the Portuguese soul that still resists slander, adversity and conformity”
Rui Eduardo Paes.
2013
Gulbenkian Foundation, PT
Author of two of the most important Portuguese contemporary music albums of recent years - Through this Looking Glass (solo piano) and Almost a Song (in a duet with José Luís Martins), Joana Sá will once again, in Elogio da Desordem (Praise of Disorder), be looking at the piano as an instrument beyond its physical limitations.
2011
MusikTexte, DE
The listener is presented with a strange cosmos of the seemingly familiar piano, refracted as if in a hall of mirrors.
Rainer Nonnenmann
