Interview for Bica Magazine

It's in the light of the last full moon of the year that I bring you my latest news. I was interviewed by the journalist Rafael Vieira about my work with musicians. It was now published in the latest edition of Revista Bica.

The portraits of Márcio Gibson, Hamid Drake, Marialuisa Capurso, Rodrigo Pinheiro and Erlend Øye were published with it. The original article was written in Portuguese and I have translated it, so that you can read it here, too. 

To learn more on the mentioned drawings, please click on the links. And to read the original article, go here.

Draw by ear

The inner tour of Rita Draper Frazão

By Rafael Vieira

Rita Draper Frazão is an artist who follows musicians in concert and improvises their portrait while they play. In this meeting of wills, will she be strumming with the musicians or will the musicians be drawing with her?

I saw Rita drawing at MIA, the Improvised Music gathering of Atouguia da Baleia (baleia means whale in Portuguese), an atypical event in the music scene, made by musicians for musicians. The lay people are there in transit and in minority.

In a small auditorium, to the sound of an orchestra of virtuous musicians, and in a medieval church (the one with the bone that gives the village its name), while Carlos Zíngaro sounded from great heights, a person came up in front of him. Either on stage or in the first chairs, watching the musician in close proximity, paying attention and drawing. Leaning over the musician and a sheet of paper, pointing out movements while her own body seemed to portray the sound that emerged in the space coming from countless instruments. I myself, the non-musician, a castaway in an archipelago of musicians and music, was surprised. I'd been told it was Rita Draper Frazão, drawing the musicians while they play.

There are different spatial perspectives and the difference in the support: the musicians weave their music in ether, the artist draws their portraits on a paper basis. In both, there's a sound frame. The gestures follow, many of them improvised, leading to an inner tour from an external interaction, relating the look and conducting the muscle. Rita applies variations in registration, material and technique, elements that appear during her creative process, catalyzing it. As in a musical progression. She comments: «I have little interest in making a portrait of what's there in front of me, a factual portrait of the person, of the musician. I am much more interested in adding things that I felt [during the concert], which are symbolic and metaphorical of that person's energy and attitude. »

But her testimony doesn't deplete with improvisation and jazz, as shown in each edition of the MIA. Rita comments: «I have drawings with very different visual expressions, but also of musicians ranging the most diverse musical expressions. That group includes people like Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Peter Murphy (Bauhaus), Toumani Diabaté, Seun Kuti, Nina Miranda (Smoke City), Irene Lima (Portuguese Symphony Orchestra), Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience) and so many others, who have ​​other languages than jazz and improvisation.»

Her works are a composition, an inseparable and united part of the music released by the musician at the time of the concert and reveal an artist who embarks in the moment, in gesture and in musical taste.

in: Revista Bica, December 2020

Rafael Vieira is a cultural journalist and an architect, from Coimbra. Simultaneously, he's someone in whom I felt literature and writing rooted in his bones. Very observant and sensitive. Only a person with such features could've understood my work the way he's expressed.

At the end of the day, I feel so fortunate to improvise in drawing and get in touch with such talented people. Making these drawings feels like flying on a magic cloud, or sailing in an island of hope.

And it's with that sense of luck, a puff in a colorful and creative cloud, that I set sail and I wish that art may lift your spirit in such times. A new journey is about to begin, and I wish everybody a happy, compassionate and healthy new year!