The navigator

In reimagining Sao Bento station for this piece, we wanted to foreground the feelings the space gave us in its own right, and background the distracting hubbub of tourists jostling for Instagram photos. The resulting composition is a spacious, stripped-back instrumental, in which the field recording lies throughout as a bed, held safely at a distance and only making itself known periodically throughout the piece. The music itself is a representation of the feeling we had looking up at the scenes of history on the azulejo-tiled walls, from the Battle of Valdevez in 1140 to the work scenes of wine shippers and watermill workers. The title comes from the depiction in the station of Prince Henry the Navigator.

Sao Bento station reimagined by Cities and Memory.

Photo by Rostyslav Savchyn on Unsplash