Sei Miguel (1961—2025)

Sei Miguel. Photo by Nuno Martins

By Nuno Catarino, courtesy of jazz.pt 

Sei Miguel passed away on November 11 in Lisbon, aged 64. A trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, he was one of the foremost figures of the Portuguese musical avant-garde and the author of highly original music. 

Born in Paris in 1961, he lived in Brazil before returning to Paris, and later moved to Portugal, where he began developing musical ensembles from 1986 onwards. He started with the group Moeda Noise, which already included Fala Mariam (trombone), his lifelong collaborator. He became known for his use of the pocket trumpet, and his discography began in 1988 with the album Breaker, where he lead a septet that included a young Rodrigo Amado on saxophone. In the following two years, he released Songs Against Love and Terrorism and The Blue Record — these first three albums were issued by the Ama Romanta label. 

Throughout a career that never made compromises, he collaborated with musicians such as Rafael Toral, Manuel Mota, César Burago, Bruno Silva, among others, in different formations. In the orchestrations for his groups, he worked with systems of graphic notation, preparing a general score for each piece and a specific score for each musician, complete with detailed instructions. He described himself as a “jazzman”, although his relationship with the genre was not straightforward. As he said in an interview: “The ever more institutionalized jazz, the pseudo-global jazz of the European Union Rule-Spewers, doesn’t want me. And I, given what it has become, don’t want it either. What matters to me is true jazz.” 

From 2010 onwards, he established a connection with Pedro Costa’s Clean Feed label, which gave new momentum to his recording career, releasing albums such as Esfíngico — Suite for a Jazz Combo (2010), Salvation Modes (2014), (Five) Stories Untold (2016), and The Original Drum (2023). One of his most unusual albums is Turbina Anthem (No Business), a sparse and melancholic jazz/folk duo with Pedro Gomes. An important project in recent years was O Carro de Fogo de Sei Miguel, a “small orchestra of all fusions,” as he called it. They released a self-titled album in 2019 (Clean Feed), followed in 2023 by their second record, Um Um Um E Não Há Forma De Morrer (Shhpuma). His final release was Panorama (ezz-thetics), recorded in a trio with Fala Mariam and cellist Daniel Levin. 

Beyond being a profoundly original musician, Sei Miguel was also a fascinating personality — marked by deep intelligence — who left a lasting impression on all who knew him.