Those who see Som.Sim.Zero (the orchestra composed by the Deaf Association of São Miguel Island, Onda Amarela, and the Rabo de Peixe Music School, and whoever else appears) stepping onto the stage at Rock in Rio Lisbon, can hardly imagine this project’s the embryonic stages. This accidental arrangement between a reticent Deaf As...

Combining corn and cheese tortillas in an appetizing delicacy proves that, when it’s time to get going, simple and practical things work best. And that's how the combo of DJ Quesadilla (a chef gilding rhythms and sautéing dance floors) and Tascá (intimate space known for its bohemian vibes and local poetry) cooked up one of the ...

Variety artist, creative mind, actor, approachable idol and now an expert dancer, Wandson Lisboa has been the true ambassador of the Azores-Maranhão transatlantic relations. The Azoreans took the Festas do Divino to Maranhão, Wandson brought the the power of friendship, first as part of Antena 3's entourage and now as a friend o...

The genealogical lineage of the art of Drag in the Azores is a line that is barely legible and very difficult to trace: Tia Maria do Nordeste is an absent relative, the subversion of gender roles is often a carnivalesque joke. That is why Valdemar Creator (from somewhere along Ribeira Grande, during the day)/Valley Dation (from ...

Nuno Gervásio is an example of mastery in the art of digital content and phone photography. But even the most skilled master is bound to one day find a suitable opponent. In this case, the hyperactivity of the festival combined with the photogenic nature of the island itself meant that Gervásio came to the Azores prepared to tes...

The work of a stage manager is always hard, but everyone who does it at Tremor should be decorated at Palácio de Santana. From concerts right next to waterfalls, to rain every other hour and having to assemble instruments apparently forged in strange worlds, it’s one big itch for a person to scratch. Giving us a peek behind the ...

Competing with Filipe Caetano and Rui Rofino for the position of veteran with more editions of Tremor in his pocket, Cristóvão Ferreira is already the grand piano of the house when it comes to festival residencies. In addition to a concert that made the ceiling collapse at Arco 8, Cristóvão chose the opening concert of Tremor 20...

Ricardo Martins is from Lisbon but at this point, he might as well have learned how to play the drums on fish barrels in São Roque. After coming to play solo (Tremor 2016), with Filho da Mãe (Tremor 2016) and as part of the Pop Dell'arte entourage (Tremor 2018), in 2021 he locked himself up in Ribeira Grande, together with Filho...

Unwitting as to what sins they might be atoning for, the pilgrimages that the people from Antena 3 take around the island of São Miguel are always painful. Despite that, the fact that their Master Pilgrim is from São Miguel and already seasoned in the field (radio broadcaster Tiago Ribeiro, of course), makes the journey little l...

For people who have yet to experience Tremor and are considering dipping their toe in the festival, the first question to leave their mouth is: “Is it true that you went to see a concert on another island?”. Not only is this true, but the aforementioned concert was a concert by the shamans of Brazilian tropic-neo-psychedelic, Bo...

A mere amount of 15 minutes is what stopped the ¾ Hostel from hosting Tremor’s #1 opening event (the first concert in the festival's history was Jiboia da Mãe, at Galeria Fonseca Macedo, and, right after, we had Gonçalo playing right across the street). However, ¾ (which is now a coffeeshop) has become a sort of Tremor headquart...

Despite having already been pointed out as the programmer with the best “poker face”, there is photographic evidence of the almost-exact moment when Márcio Laranjeira discovered that Beak>, one of the most coveted headliners of Tremor 2017, would not be coming to the festival. So, in order to let you draw your own conclusions...

The doors to the paradise that is Ferraria do not open just for anyone. They open to anyone brave enough to drive a 45-degree turn towards the rocky cliffside. If doing that in a simple car is already enough to make anyone sweat through their moustache, then the task of coordinating a bus full of festivalgoers could only fall in...

Tremor's Swiss army knife, Gui Garrido, clearly didn’t know what he was signing up for when he agreed to play as Bandido e o Coração Pirata, in the 2015 edition of the festival. After this concert (which joined the pantheon of “musical projects that practically only ever performed one concert in their lives and it was at Tremor”...

By the end of March and with Tremor over, there is a change of foliage across the Azorean-adjacent social media. The profile pictures become pictures of hugs, beers in hands, people having a good time by waterfalls, people enjoying concerts, people having fun with each other. This kind of collective photo-phenomenon is only poss...

Look at him then and look at him now. From a personified seismograph on duty carrying cameras heavier than he is, to shouldering the toughest man on the south coast in one of the toughest concerts in the festival's history, Diogo Lima (Lima_Master_9000 for the fans) changes weight categories like a champ. In 2019, he added "hype...

Considering the fact that she is the host of a literature program on the radio (O Fim dos Princípios), it comes as no surprise to suspect a certain poetic bias in the way Helena Barros retells memories of the festival. Although she was part of Tremor’s media team in 2015, her most cherished memory still comes from her days as a ...

While “senior” festivalgoers sleep and recover from the night before, an underworld of concerts, performances and workshops aimed at children take place during the mornings of the festival. To present us with some morning memories of Tremor, André Menezes Melo (member of Dú-Dé-DU, founder of Musiquim, production director of Estú...

Half of BANDIDO$, box office cornerstone, dedicated cyclist, and director of the best documentary on “businesses to manufacture soy ice cream started by nonagenarians from Faial”, Bruno Sousa (ticket office coordinator in 2016, 2018 and 2019), demonstrates with these two stories that cultivating versatility in various trades is ...

The wind turbines in Graminhais, the Marconi antenna, the Space Station in Santa Maria, and the PMDS electronics (the duo Filipe Caetano and Pedro Sousa), complement each other to give the Azores a dystopian eco-futuristic scenario. And it is precisely a dystopian feeling that Filipe Caetano, who told us these episodes, craves: ...

With an initial purpose of re-inhabiting some forgotten spaces in Ponta Delgada, Tremor remains faithful to its mission of re-contextualizing and reviving places, sounds, bands and, in this story’s case, the memory of loved ones. Known by some as a father, husband, brother-in-law, friend, actor, and teacher, and remembered by al...

For many years considered a true cultural oasis on the island, inside an old fishermen’s shack, Arco 8, in Santa Clara, has always been a safe haven to escape from another night listening to covers of “Alive” by Pearl Jam in Ponta Delgada. That being said, it has been the perfect place to host a load of Tremor concerts. Headed b...

As dictated by geophysics, the effects of aftershocks from an earthquake are, in most cases, unpredictable. And, doing justice to this analogy, André Belchior Sousa could hardly have predicted that Tremor would be at the epicenter of his master's thesis, meritoriously defended in 2017, at the Faculty of Letters of the University...

Any artist who survives a Tremor residency receives a kind of seal of guarantee that they are fit for anything. Time is short, resources are scarce (and limited by the Atlantic surrounding the island), artists generally meet each other on the spot and there is always the risk of the weather forcing you to relocate your concert t...

Affectionately nicknamed as “Tremor’s Ivete Sangalo”, Rui Rofino and Clemente Matos Almeida (WE SEA) are the constant postcard that proves that Azorean music continues to grow in the islands. A tour that includes a Coliseum (2022), a bandstand (2018), a Casa de Bacalhau (2017), a residency with their current label partner, Pedro...

During the process of collecting the stories that paved the way to the festival’s tenth edition, we came across a recurring concern about a certain event: “You are not going to talk about of Kitas's son’s fall, are you?”. Out of this entire collection, this story is arguably the hardest to tell and it is only included here for a...

During the festival’s long run, some criticism has emerged painting Tremor as a caricatural performative festival, laden with unintelligible music and forged only to bring about the collapse the traditional Azorean culture. The legacy Tremor has been building over all these years, and continues to build, demonstrates that these ...

In the Azores, there is a peculiar contradiction regarding the presentation of cows as the most representative animal of the islands. On the one hand, there is no advertisement, billboard or television billboard that does not include a herd carefreely grazing in the postcard-like landscapes of the islands. On the other hand, the...

“Azorean Torpor” — an expression coined by two English brothers who visited the Azores in the 19th century — is described as a feeling of near-fading and an accidental inertia, which is inherent to the condition of being an Azorean. Márcio Laranjeira (co-founder of the Lovers & Lollypops label and one of those responsible fo...

Cyclically, measures are rethought to make it attractive for health professionals to settle in the region. However, the financial incentives, the ease of access to the workplace, or the postcard landscapes, do not compare to the possibility of meeting members of your favorite bands, a couple of hours before going to their concer...

If there is another characteristic that unites all Azoreans, it is the complete disdain for the question: “So, how is the Azores Island doing?”. Although we cannot excuse this archipelagic dyslexia when it comes out of the mouth of someone from the mainland, from Barcelos, for example, motherland to Joaquim Durães (co-founder an...

Somewhere in the dungeons of the archives of this festival's history are kept two or three more episodes of local festivalgoers who also got lost among the approximately eight kilometers of kahili ginger and caves that make up the Janela do Inferno trail. Therefore, it is not up to us to judge the sense of direction of an artist...

Having, at great cost, left the position of programmer to dedicate himself to the herculean task of conceiving Ponta Delgada’s European Capital of Culture 2027 candidacy, the much-missed António Pedro Lopes (co-founder, from Ponta Delgada and Tremor’s programmer between 2014 and 2020) was unanimously described by the other three...

With a curriculum at the festival that already stocks up to five years in the area of production and audiovisual (2015-2020), one year as a guest artist (with the project “Despensas – A Tradição de Rabo de Peixe", in 2019) and a Mini-Tremor under his alter-ego DJ Paco Piri Piri (with Valley Dation, in 2021), Rubén Monfort, who h...