Trumpeter Sei Miguel, a leading figure in national jazz, has died. He was 64 years old.
His death was announced by jazz bassist Hernâni Faustino, who played with Sei Miguel in various contexts, and Rui Pedro Dâmaso, organizer of the Barreirense festival Out.Fest, via social media.
Born in Paris in 1961, Sei Miguel spent his childhood in Brazil, before returning to France and settling in Portugal in the 1980s. In 1984, he formed Moeda Noise, alongside Fala Mariam (who would become his regular collaborator) and João Parrinha; the group ended its activities two years later.
His first album, “Breaker”, in septet format, was released in 1988, through Ama Romanta. That same year, he was on the cover of the then newspaper BLITZ and, a year later, nominated for the Golden Seven.
Throughout a vast career, he also collaborated with No Noise Reduction and Pop Dell’Arte, being considered, by the British magazine “The Wire”, as “the best kept secret of new Portuguese music”. “Panorama”, his latest record, with Fala Mariam and Daniel Levin, came out in 2024.
The pocket trumpet was the instrument of choice for a musician who considered himself, first and foremost, “a jazzman” Despite this, and his work, the Portuguese jazz scene voted him into oblivion many times: “The increasingly established jazz, pseudo-global jazz and the European Union Caga Rules (UECR), doesn’t want me. And I, just as he has become, don’t want him either. I care about real jazz. The rest (and there’s a lot of it) is screwed”, he told the newspaper Público, in 2010.