A native from Pennsylvania currently residing in New York, Chris Lightcap began his bass studies at the age of fourteen and proceeded his musical education in classical composition and improvisation, having had as teachers influential figures of contemporary music such as Bill Dixon or Alvin Lucier. In the course of the years and practically since its inception, the bassist’s trajectory was marked by the intersection of generations and movements active in the jazz circuit, ever since his first collaborations with historic figures of free jazz such as Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp or Sunny Murray, to his most recent creative contributions to the works of emerging musicians of contemporary jazz, such as guitarist Mary Halvorson. An instrumentalist of impressive stylistic elasticity that allows him to pursue creative partnerships with very different musicians such as Matt Wilson (with whose quartet he performed at Guimarães Jazz in 2016), Regina Carter, Paul Motian or Marc Ribot, Chris Lightcap develops also a compositional work for several ensembles, both within the conventional jazz circuit as well as within the frame of more institutional contexts.

SuperBigMouth is the result of the bridge between two of Chris Lightcap’s previous projects – the quintet BigMouth, of which the Portuguese record label Clean Feed released two albums, and Superette, a group of an electric sonority and whose discographic debut features the contributions of Nels Cline and John Medeski. This octet was originally formed by some of the most influential and respected musicians of contemporary jazz (namely saxophonists Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver) and represents the combination of two dimensions of Lightcap’s work: on the one hand the rock-based deconstruction practiced by the Superette faction and, on the other, the groove and melodic expansivity of post-bob sensibility provided by the wind and rhythmic section of the group BigMouth. SuperBigMouth will perform at Guimarães Jazz with a slightly different line-up from the original group – guitarist Jonathan Goldberger is replaced by Ben Monder, keyboardist Brian Marsella takes the place of Craig Taborn, and on drums Dan Rieser trades place with Josh Dion; all the other elements remain. However, none of these changes indicate a detour from the original spirit of this project, since we are speaking about three high-level musicians who the festival is honored to welcome – in the case of Ben Monder for the second time after the superlative concert of Andrew Cyrille’s quartet in 2017 in which he participated.