Phantone, Angélica Salvi’s début album, expresses what we’ve learnt from her work in the last few years: she has a unique ability to communicate an express herself freely with her instrument, the harp. Hailing from Spain, but living in Porto since 2011, where she teaches at the Music Conservatory. Her trajectory includes collaborations with Evan Parker, the Casa da Música Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modelo 62, Brokkenfabriek, Butch Morris, and work developed for Sonoscopia or Balleteatro. The album, recorded during the Encontrarte de Amares, at the Rendufe Monastery, seeks freedom, sonic and the way in which sound can inhabit a space with different layers and allusions to several paths. The “ghost” which exists in the seven pieces in Phantone is quite real, but less formal than you might imagine. More an affirmation than a presence, whether in the places imagined by Salvi’s music or the concrete effects that the recordings in the Monastery produced on her music. Music that one can read, listen, smell, feel and taste.

It is already a structural part of the festival's DNA, the joint work of ondamarela and the São Miguel Deaf Association. In the past two editions, they are the fair owners of some of the most emotive and special images and moments of the festival. In september, they will meet again to give us another chapter to this memoir book.

ondmarela collective conceives, develops and implements collaborative artistic projects. Above all, it’s interested in the relationship between a specific place, a group of people in that place and the artistic gestures built by sharing. They’ve worked with communities in Bragança, Ílhavo, Guimarães (European Capital of Culture 2012), La Valletta (European Capital of Culture 2018), Historical Villages of Portugal, among many other projects.

The São Miguel Island Deaf Association (ASISM) has the mission of developing and creating support structures for azorean deaf citizens, guaranteeing their autonomy, individuality, their rights and the response to their needs, acting in an integrated way on factors of exclusion and encouraging the exercise of active citizenship. It promotes cultural, recreational and artistic activities, and intervenes in the media to raise public awareness of the issue of deafness in all social aspects.

berru is an artist collective from Porto trained in the Fine Arts, Multimedia, Cinema and Engineering and dedicated to artistic creation. Their work reflects on the intimate relationship between human beings and machines, a relationship that increasingly focuses on philosophical, anthropological, political, social and ethical issues. The collective has recently become interested in complex and biological systems, finding inspiration in the relationship between the human being and the world in order to think, debate and create. By combining technology, art, science and philosophy, the collective gains an extensive perspective to explore various discourses with different tools and materials.

More info soon.

They are an undeniable case of success and transversality within the context of contemporary Portuguese music. More than 25 years after their first ascent on stage they renew, with each record edition, their commitment to rigor, in music, in the use of voice, in the lyrics and in the unmistakable energy that they transport to the stage. Véspera, their most recent LP, was released in the spring of 2020, ready to break with glimpses of an oasis within the strangeness of the times we are living in. After “taking over” radio playlists and national tops, the album hits the stage, on a tour in which the band gives body and muscle to the new songs, but also brings other themes and classics that are part of their (our) history of the Clans.

Born within several travels around Portugal, but nested in Porto, the trio composed of Francisco Lima, Raul Mendiratta and José Miguel Silva is yet another proof of the creativity and cooperation that have been marking, by these days, different areas of Porto. From Bazar Esotérico, the introduction ceremony for their post-punk emergencies, and Ata Saturna, the debut LP released earlier this year, they’ve taken the time to walk through the streets of their, of our, cities, recording their routines, stories and the frames of atomized populations. Along the way, they made themes that describe the emergence of another messiah, with new nihilist discoveries wrapped in simple melodies with a retro-futuristic feeling. Let’s shout with them: ‘apocalypse has already happened, fate has struck, anarchy has been contained, tomorrow is not a promise, anxiety is perpetual, the sun never rises here.’

Débora Silva is a freelance visual artist born in Portugal. Silva studied sculpture at Belas Artes - University of Lisbon and graduated with a bachelor's degree. From London, where she lives since 2018, she has been specializing in digital art, developing a body of work inspired by the traditional processes of sculpture, which revolves around the personification of a creature she calls Venus. Venus is an ethereal being; an unknown, unconventional and powerful female entity. Silva's creative process in the virtual space frees his subjects from physical matter, becoming an unrestrained exercise in the exploration of form. The representation of reality within Silva's virtual world makes him an accomplice and critic of contemporary society.

It’s hard to find one weekend out of the year when you can’t find them on stage. From clubs to balconies, from stairwells to biker bars or huge festivals, it’s there that Dirty Coal Train feel comfortable. A power trio with DIY inspiration, created by the couple Ricardo Ramos and Beatriz Rodrigues, they’re one of the most productive and hard working bands in the business, without losing the realness with which they grab on to rock and roll. Since 2012, when they presented their début EP, Killer Brains From Venus, they’ve released more than 14 records, with extensive tours, both within and without their borders. Inspired by 60s garage punk and B-movies, their songs are inhabited by zombies, intergalactic beings, voodoo wizards and the landscapes in these adventures through imaginary worlds. Primitive, their most recent album, it’s one of several reasons that lead us to them.

The collaboration between Tremor and Escola de Música de Rabo de Peixe is a story of talent, dedication, innovation and transformation through art. For the 2021 edition, Jerry The Cat joins the project of São Miguel for the opening show of the festival, which will have jazz as the subject of negotiation and exploration. 

Producer and musician, Jerry the Cat (Jerrald James) is a talented percussionist and dj, internationally recognized for his sense of rhythm and the almost organic way in which he delivers exotic music. Circulating in the most diverse artistic areas (cinema, theater and music), he has demonstrated an impressive capacity to install himself in any musical space and, from there, to create the most diverse musical atmospheres. As a dj he uses tension as a method of exploration for the creation of sound environments painted with tribal elements, as a musician he has been collaborating with a vast number of professionals: from jazz to funk, from blues to disco, from rock to electronics. Throughout his career he has played and collaborated with names such as Derrick May, Carl Craig, Roger Sanchez, Moodymann (Kenny Dixon Jr.), Theo Parrish, Little Louis Vega, Cassius, Loosers, Audiopath (SHIFT), Steve Bird, among others.

Since its 3rd edition, Tremor has worked with Escola de Música de Rabo de Peixe (EMRP), creating opportunities for the 70 jazz students that compose the project to work with new artists and access unique experiences, techniques and repertoires. EMRP aims to contribute, through musical education, to the development of children and young people from this disadvantaged community on the island.

Beatriz Brum is a visual artist who develops her research around light, through processes and experiences that question its materiality, limits and forms. Brum has a degree in Plastic Arts from Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, where she also completed her Masters in Cultural Management (2017) and Plastic Arts (2019). In 2015 she won the Young Creators award at the Walk & Talk Festival, in which she presented the solo exhibition “Reflexos”. She has regularly participated in several group exhibitions and is also the founder of Brum Atelier, a work and programming space on the island of São Miguel. In 2019, she participated in the project of Galeria Fonseca Macedo, for the International Drawing Room Fair and in the PULAU exhibition, also in Lisbon. More recently, in 2020, she organized, together with the boilers studio, the exhibition Figura-Lugar in the city of Lagoa, Azores and also participated in the collective exhibition We Never Say Never, in the VAGA space in Ponta Delgada.

It’s not like we’ve been working to hide it, but here it goes: we really like funána. Inspired by popular Portuguese rhythms (and others from European countries), as well as African ancestral music, it’s a kind of musical “Creole” that appeals to dance in its most natural, earthly and primary state. Party music linked to the Atlantic soul of a country, it unites urban centers with their peripheries, often reflecting the life, suffering, joy or socio-political reality of those who interpret it. It is, alongside morna, coladeira and batuque, one of the most widespread Cape Verdean cultural brands. It’s within this universe that we find Ferro Gaita, ambassadors (alongside some Bulimundo or Finaçon) of a heritage that is made of ingenuity, emotion, sensuality and viscerality. Fundu Baxu, Rei di Tabanka or Rei di Funaná will be some of the hymes that will lead, in Azores, another trip to the most raw and vibrant side of this intoxicating game between the iron (local cape verdian instrument) and the diatonic accordion.

Sonoscopia is an association for the creation, production and promotion of artistic and educational projects focused on the areas of experimental music, sound research and its interdisciplinary crossings with literature, dance, theater and visual arts.
Since its creation in 2011, Sonoscopia has produced more than 700 events, artistic creations, educational activities and publications in about 20 European countries, the United States, Lebanon, Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia.
Sonoscopia also has a physical space located in Porto, where several small studios are equipped and prepared for the conception and production of creative and scientific works. Sonoscopia also provides a space for residences and informal presentations, having hosted hundreds of artists from all over the world.

Norberto Lobo and Filho da Mãe are two of the most respected Portuguese musicians of nowadays, taking the guitar as the instrument through which they reinvent the world, touching the universe of those who hear and follow them. Owners of a constantly evolving and efevercent musical language, they’ve conquered, with their albums, some of the most disputed tops of musical criticism and, with that, the broad respect of audience and peers. For this special creation at Tremor, they join Ricardo Martins, one of the most interesting and multifaceted drummers operating on Portuguese soil. The show, the first chapter of this meeting, will feature a visual presentation to be developed in dialogue with the music.

Gregory Le Lay lives and works in Ponta Delgada, on the island of São Miguel. In 2018 he created the gallery / workshop “BRUI”. In his work, Gregory Le Lay explores various ways to articulate fragmented worlds and build assemblies of graphic features, objects or sounds, in a dynamic game with architecture. His exhibitions attract the visitor in an organic relationship with the signs. The forms proposed to cross are scenarios with multiple understandings that question our perception.

InSeCureFrank is a singer-songwriter, poet and video artist born in 1993 under the magical glaze of the telluric Atlantic Islands of Azores. The artist moved from Lisbon to London in 2014 and has since then established his practice in the UK. The poetics of the musician’s work portraits the social and political endeavours of a non-binary worldling allied to the melancholic dimmed lights of London. In Frank’s music, vulnerability is the recipe and the catalyst for an eminent change in a journey of multiplicity in the perpetual search of meaning. InSeCureFrank is currently working on an LP entitled Loose Dog Loves which was recorded in Sao Miguel Island as part of an Artistic Residence held at Carlos Machado Museum.

João Pais Filipe is a drummer, percussionist and sound sculptor. Living in Porto, his  musical path is characterized by the approach to a wide range of styles and languages, both solo as within bands and collaborative projects, such as CZN, HHY & The Macumbas or Burnt Friedman & João Pais Filipe. In parallel, he develops regular activity in improvised music, having collaborated with Fritz Hauser, Evan Parker, Z'EV, Carlos “Zíngaro” and Rafael Toral, among others. João Pais Filipe also develops a work of construction of gongs, cymbals and other metal percussive instruments, through which he explores both the acoustic properties of these objects, as well as their potential sculptural and imagery dimension.

More info soon.

Kelman Duran is from the Dominican Republic, but currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His music is a fiery fusion of Afro-Caribbean rhythms with a political bent. One of the main inspirations for his music is the Haitian revolution, which had a huge impact on his debut album of ethereal reggaeton, 1804 KIDS.

It is in the exploration of the baffling that we find Ko Shin Moon, the French duo keen on developing ethno-musical experiences. Pushing the boundaries of time and space, Axel Moon and Niko Shin mix acoustic instruments from different parts of the world, analog devices, traditional music, electronic arrangements, sampling and field recordings in a kind of soundtrack for a patchwork trip. Their debut album compiled memories of hybrid territories, imaginary landscapes and multicolored collages, where Greek and Turkish clubs meet traditional Tibetan music and the rhythm of Dabke dance. With 78 Fragments, released in 2019, they created a sound piece that reinvents the musical collection of Gallica (digital archive of the National Library of France) proving, once again, its (seemingly inexhaustible) ability to create music made of shrapnel in a way that is, at the same time, original and unquestionably fun.

When Panagiotis Melidis, the producer who records as Larry Gus, started editing records, his creations expressed a particular taste for creating a thick patchwork and samples that summarized the music he was listening to. Collecting artifacts here and there, from disco to soul, from hip-hop to psychedelic, if there is one thing we can say in his defense, it is that, from 2006 until today, his music is a testament to his ability to transform the old in the new, opening doors to a world that seems distant from the one we faced from the start. Subservient, the most recent album released via DFA Records, is not only his most pop record, it is also the first in which the Greek builds everything from scratch, without resorting to any other sample. Sung in English and Greek, Subservient walks along the border band, between Greek pop and folk, between anxiety and empathy, conceptually recapitulating the life of Gus as a father, husband, artist and human, in a country still erasing fires of its most mediatic economic crisis.

It was one of the great musical comebacks of the last couple of years in Portugal. After integrating a number of projects, from rock to jazz, connecting on stage with the new generation of Portuguese musicians, Lena D'Água entered 2019 ready to give body to a great party. Desalmadamente arrived to store’s shelves in May, thirty years after Tu Aqui, her last solo album. Alongside with her new nuclear band (built on the skeleton of the portuguese group They're Heading West), João Correia, Mariana Ricardo, Francisca Cortesão and Sérgio Nascimento, and with Benjamin's production, the new album launches the clues for a new look into Lena's career. The ten songs, composed by Pedro da Silva Martins dos Deolinda, break out from the nostalgia and challenge us to (re)discovery of one of the most important voices in Portuguese pop rock.

Luís Gil Bettencourt is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in the island's musical imaginarium. He was born at Base das Lajes on June 26, 1956, within a family of musicians from Graciosa Island hired by the American military to compose a Big Band in that decade. With the common collaboration of his brothers Paulo, Nuno and Roberto as well as his daughter Maria Bettencourt, Luis owns a very eclectic musical background that has its foundation stone in rock. Along his journey he discovers local azorean instrument viola da terra, with which he builds the soundtrack of the television series Xailes Negros. Also with this typical instrument, to which he added the adufe, he composes the soundtrack for a documentary on the life of José Saramago. Today, and alongside his daughter, he takes viola da terra to the stages of Hollywood, London and New York.

Luís Senra is an azorean saxophonist and free improviser, born in Rabo de Peixe, who has been developing performances where the main focus is the exploration of sound, the acoustic particularities of the saxophone and the way it relates to different natural and urban spaces. Since 2017 he has been involved in several projects that experience the dialogue skills of music. As a performer he was part of the MIA - Atouguia da Baleia Improvised Music Meeting, Serralves em Festa, Azores Fringe Festival and Improv Acción. In 2019, he started the Performative Cycle "Geometria Sónica", promoted by the Archipelago - Contemporary Arts Center, and participated in the albums Cowboy Microwave Music by Elliot Sheddy and Prima Pratica from Creative Sources Recordings, alongside musicians such as Ernesto Rodrigues, Gianna de Toni , Biagio Verdolini and Luis Couto.

MADMADMADs are looking for liberation. Through dance and hedonism, they use music as a space to deal with their personal alienations and the mental disorder of the society that surrounds them. At the base, a mandatory reference to the sacred places of no wave, disco and post-punk, here filtered by the most original experimentalism that we can remember. The result opens the door to their refuge studio, and to the conciliation of the wishes of a jam session. To keep an eye on, as there took hold of a manifest capable of gaining many followers.

Self-taught musician and composer born in S. Miguel, Mário Raposo has been making music with synthesizers since the 90s, encompassing influences from jazz, classical music, new age, electronics and the art of the soundtrack. Still in that decade he joined the duo Art & Soul and made the musical arrangements for releases of prominent figures of Azorean music such as Aníbal Raposo and Luís Alberto Bettencourt, as well as compositions for documentaries and advertising. With a remarkable discography since 2007, Mário Raposo will present, for the first time, some of his themes in a cross between new age, environmental music and aesthetics commonly associated with the world of science fiction.

PMDS is an ambient/techno/experimental electronic music project by Pedro Sousa and Filipe Caetano. The first with classical piano training and the second with many kilometers on the dance floors; both with an (un) controlled passion for analog equipment, synthesizers and audio gadgets. They released their first album in 2011 via the Portuguese label Thisco and toured several Portuguese cities. The project's curriculum also includes collaboration for the creation of a theme for Nam June Paik's Vide-O-Belisk to be shown at the Brooks Museum in Memphis. Right now they are preparing the second album, betting on a more industrial sound.

The use of the word travel isn’t new when we talk about Samuel Martins Coelho’s work. After a long career integrating collective projects of a multiverse personality, from the postmodernist improvisation of Space Ensemble and MODS Collective, to working with several theater companies as an instrumentalist and composer, he premiered, solom with Partita para violino solo, an album where he reconnects with the instrument in which he was trained as a musician and that he used to be reconciled with himself. In 2021, in a perpetual movement of succession and overcoming, he edited Cura, a record about discovery, reinvention and surprise.

Sensible Soccers are one of the most consistent and appreciated contemporary Portuguese bands. They started their journey in 2011 with a first EP where they invited us to travel through their universe dotted with melancholy. From there they delivered 8 and Villa Soledad, albums in which they made very clear their taste for themes that escape from the traditional song format, based on structures and arrangements in progress. They returned, in 2019, with a renewed set up, in a new creative space, where they open up, more clearly, to pop melodies and dance. At the start of this new Aurora (the fifth album that catapulted them - again - to the national music tops) they are again experimenting with the aesthetic diversity with which they build their themes.

Slim Soledad is a black transvestite, performer and DJ born in São Paulo (Brazil), currently working from Berlin. Soledad’s work explores the multiple possibilities of movement of his body, crossing the influences of brazilian funk, vogue and contemporary dances. He is co-founder of the queer collective “Chernobyl” 1, with a focus on a POC and LGBTQIA + audience.

Sofia Caetano lives and works between Pittsburgh, in the USA, and the Azores, in Portugal. She graduated in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and completed her Master of Fine Arts in Media Art at Emerson College, in Boston, USA, where she later taught. In 2016 she joined Elliot Sheedy and founded a production company, The Spectacular House, where she produces original content. She is currently developing her first feature film, The Happiest Man. Her work focuses on the relationship between the moving image and the viewer. It explores the space between the two-dimensionality of the screen and the three-dimensionality of its relationship with the installation, investigating form and presentation modes.

By this time, it has become natural to assume that Barcelos water has something special. Although we don't know for sure, truth is said that what it has done for rock in this country is admirable. Solar Corona were born from this creative bubbling of a portuguese city that shows how to write rock with line pies. How it should be. Formed in 2013, in 2016 they reached a consensus on the formation and settled in a quartet, with Rodrigo Carvalho (guitar / synthesizers), Peter Carvalho (drums), José Roberto Gomes (bass) and Julius Gabriel (saxophone / synthesizers). After the edition of three EPs between 2013 and 2016, Solar Corona reached Lightning One, their first LP is the result of years of work in search of the sound that would triumph in this formation. Here, Solar Corona use their stoner rock clothes at will and open a highway to fast rock hell, full of hypnotic desires. Lightning One is a journey at the top, with the right coordinates in the mix.

More info soon.

The Warmduschers are (and note that we are quoting) a group of  miscreants, known only by their pseudonyms: Clams Baker Jr, Lightnin 'Jack Everett, Salt Fingers, Quicksand and Dr. Withers, also known as Little Whiskers. Integrating several ex-members of Fat White Family, the collective seems to follow the genetic impositions of their ancestry: take a traditional music genre and do everything in their power to destroy it. It was like that with Khaki Tears and yet again in Whale City, a kind of rock-opera that, according to the band, serves as an amusement park for everyone who has already managed to escape their comfort zone. In Tainted Lunch, the latest album, they brought together two extra cooks and the best imported ingredients that money can buy, Iggy Pop and Kool Keith, serving the hottest meal of funk, punk, hip-hop and lounge rock. If you can't stand the heat, it’s best to leave the kitchen.

More info soon.

Epicenter: Promise is a site-specific exhibition designed for São Miguel Island and curated by Tremor, which features musicians, visual and sound artists from the Azores and overseas. To be inaugurated during the festival dates, the exhibition includes works by the collective Berru, the duo Débora Silva and Slim Soledad, João Pais Filipe and Beatriz Brum (co-produced by Artworks), Gregory Le Lay and Sonoscopia.

Artistic programme designed for families and children. Concerts, workshops, installations, interactive scenography and entertainment activities are some of the multigenerational proposals of this programme.

Tremor artists are invited to play in various places on the island for unique, secret concerts with limited capacity. 

Nature walks accompanied by site-specific sound compositions in two formats: a soundtrack for the trekking and a live performance to see at the end of the trail.

Carried out by the partnership between Tremor festival and the Archipelago - Contemporary Arts Center, UniTremor will organize a four-week training cycle that will serve as a training opportunity for new local cultural agents, in a continuation of the work that both entities have been developing towards the empowerment of the territory and its community. Taking place throughout May, both online and in room, the cycle has a modular structure having as its main formative axis the share of know-how and tools that can trigger the implementation of new artistic-cultural projects in the Azorean community. Four modules consisting of four sessions will cover the areas of Creation, Communication, Programming and Production. The team of trainers for this first edition is composed by the musician David Bruno, the programmer, curator and musician Luís Fernandes, the producer and sound technician Eduardo Maltez and the communication professionals Sara Cunha and André Forte.

In total, 15 vacancies will be available per module, and it is possible to enroll in the entire course for the value of 15 euros, or in specific modules, at the price of 5 euros each. Registrations can be made through the email: info@tremor-pdl.com. The courses will operate after working hours on weekdays , between 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm, and between 10:00 am and 5:30 pm on Saturday and Sundays. 

Taking place between the 7th and the 11th of September, the 2021 edition of Tremor will announce the first line-up confirmations in May. This training validated by DGERT in partnership with Arda Academy.