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Sinopse

15.º Festival Porta-Jazz

January

2025

Fri
31/1
Sun
2/2

Sinopse

Against the Clock, in Favour of TimeTime: a scarce commodity, susceptible to alternative uses. As far as the economy of attention goes, how anti-logical would it be today to ask for the time of one concert, exclusively?! Or two, three, a whole festival…? Alternatively: stop all the clocks! Cancel the Zoom meetings calendar, the parking ticket, the time to pick up the kids from swimming lessons, the deadline for changing the jacket that doesn’t fit, the race against traffic jams! Even less do we wish to succumb to the urgent and ephemeral time of social media, consumption, ads, the throwaway time, the ticking of the news, the thoughtless opinions. The antidote is as naive as it is effective: at the Porta-Jazz Festival, let us build, even if for a moment, a new and different time.

Joana Raquel "Queda Áscua" © Rui Meireles

Marques/Cabaud feat O'Gallagher & Williams "Wabi-sabi" © Hélder Luís

How Noisy Are The Rooms? © DR

João Próspero "Sopros" © Mínima

Emmanuelle Bonnet Quartet © Nicolas Masson

José Soares “SOMA” © Marianne Harlé

Paira © Inês Sioga

Fragoso Quinteto “Canta Derrocada” © Maria Bicker

Rui Miguel Abreu © Eilon Paz

Jam session © Mínima

Diversão / Improvisação © Mínima

GODUA “STOP” © João Pedro Dias

Sonic Tender © Jorge Carmona

Ensemble Mutante #2 - Kaja Draksler © DR

Demian Cabaud “Árbol Adentro” © Miguel Estima

Info sobre horário e bilhetes

Fri

31.01

17:00

23:30

Sat

1.02

15:00

23:30

Sun

2.02

17:00

23:30

RivoliMultiple venues

tickets

Aditional info

  • Price
    7€ (per block) / 2.50€ (Diversão / Improvisação) / free (jam sessions)

Acessibilidades do espetáculo

More limited access

Author's bio text

PROGRAMME

31/01 fri

17:00
Master class with Agustí Fernández (ES) 
– Pequeno Auditório

A moment to share and engage with the historic Spanish piano player, who has been shaping improvisation for over half a century of intense activity. He has recorded more than 150 albums alongside the biggest names in jazz and improvised music, such as Evan Parker, Nate Wooley and Peter Evans, and is a member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the Blue Shroud Ensemble.

Composer, performer, sideman and leader, Agustí Fernández has a valuable background, which will be the perfect motto for this session’s narrative, in which we will welcome musicians, students and listeners, eager to listen and question.


18:15 – Block 1 – Stage of Grand Auditorium
Joana Raquel "Queda Áscua" (PT)

Looking for an acoustic sound that somewhat alludes to classic chamber music, this repertoire welcomes spontaneity and is based on the concept of song. Seeking a balance between what is preconceived and what is made-up, music lives off the counterpoint and its harmonic product, and strives to be rhythmic. Joana Raquel is a masterful writer, a vocal performer full of inebriating resources with a chilling timbre that stimulates the senses. She presents her work Queda Áscua, released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz, an addition to the other projects in which she participates, for which she composes, and in which she prominently fits as one of the most valuable members of the new generation of Portuguese musicians. Poetry plays a leading role here, dictating the way in which the musical content is built and drawing the guiding line of the composition process.


Agustí Fernández / Liudas Mock?nas (ES, LT)
In partnership with Improdimensija

A dialogue between two of Europe’s most distinguished musicians and improvisers. With a solid career, veteran piano player Agustí Fernández—who celebrated his seventieth anniversary last year—has been blazing a trail in improvised music and has been widely recognised as one of Spain’s leading musicians, participating in more than one hundred and fifty albums. Liudas Mock?nas is a saxophone player and tireless explorer. He heads the Improdimensija platform, an international meeting point in Lithuania where freedom of expression, a disruptive attitude and the artistic forefront of improvised music prevail. A meeting of giants—experienced artists and unavoidable names—for a concert with a certainly challenging strong improvised component that will force time to stop.


21:30 – Block 2 – Grand Auditorium
Marques/Cabaud feat O'Gallagher & Williams "Wabi-sabi" (PT, AR, US)


Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud have long been music partners. This time around, they invited historic drummer Jeff Williams and acclaimed saxophone player John O’Gallagher, highest exponents of New York jazz, for a stroll through the quicksand of their original compositions. The vast curricula and the number of albums released by these two international notables stand out: Williams has recorded and played alongside Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Paul Bley and Stan Getz, among so many others, since the 1970s, and he has released six albums featuring his original music; John O’Gallagher is a distinguished member in projects by artists Maria Schneider, Kenny Wheeler and Michael Formanek, and he leads several ensembles that play his music, having released twelve albums.

Wabi-sabi was released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz and focuses on an ancient concept from Japanese culture, reminding us to appreciate the present time, and to accept that there is no such thing as perfection and that the illusion of attaining it takes the focus away from what is real. It is thus time to live in the here and now, to listen, watch and feel. Bring one’s full attention to the present moment and leave the rest for later.


Ursa Maior (PT, ES)

A special and unique project, designed to celebrate 15 years of the Porta-Jazz Festival. Ursa Maior brings together a small crowd of musicians linked to Porta-Jazz in a monumental ensemble that reflects the ambition, teeming movement and collective spirit that are the hallmarks of this community. Between controlled exploration, primordial sound and astonishing filigree, this topnotch ensemble presents improvised music as an exuberant feast of communion and sharing.



23:30, TMP Café
ESMAE JAZZ + jam session

An invitation to the jazz course of ESMAE – Higher School of Music and Performing Arts to present a concert featuring one of its combos as the opening motto for the jam session. The stage will be open to musicians wishing to join in, which is an essential practice at any jazz festival, especially in the presence of national and international musicians, where the sharing and exchange we enable greatly enrich the community.



01/02 sat

15:00 – TMP Café - Rivoli

ART’J and the Porto Music Conservatory

An invitation to the jazz courses of the Jobra Music Conservatory and the Porto Music Conservatory to present a shared moment on Saturday afternoon with the aim of shining a spotlight on the students in the area, making sure they engage in a real public showcase situation in a challenging context such as a jazz festival. These secondary school students shall have a moment dedicated to them in the programme, where they will present the work carried out in their combo classes, thus sharing with the audience some of the promising sounds of the next generation of Portuguese jazz.



16:00 – Block 3 – Grand Auditorium Stage + Understage
PAIRA (PT, ES)

PAIRA present their work around a repertoire written by all members. It has been released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz, and it is wrapped in an aesthetics that merges composition and free improvisation. The only norm the group follows is the reinvention of compositions in real time, and therefore the outcome is (in)determined as much by chance as by choice. Hovering [Pairar] entails a suspension in time and space, where the quartet looks for lightness, flexibility and quick transformation, characteristics that arise from improvisation and the underlying freedom. They invite us to enjoy, to navigate the dichotomy of stability and instability, and to listen to their dialogues in mid-air.



How Noisy Are The Rooms? (DE, CH, AT)
In partnership with Bezau Beatz

An eclectic and provocative trio, originating from three spots in the middle of Europe—Germany, Switzerland and Austria—and brought together at the heart of the experimental and improvised music that blossoms at the annual Bezau Beatz Festival, with which Porta-Jazz has established an exchange. This year’s proposal to participate in the Porta-Jazz Festival involves three seminal musicians in the European scene, who in this project seek to test the understanding of different perspectives on sound, sending out a strong, steady energy with elements colliding with one another in a sonic explosion. One expects creative anarchy, vocal sounds that recall distant cultures, labyrinths of electronic manipulation, and tireless ritualistic percussion.

18:15 – Block 4 – Small Auditorium
João Próspero "Sopros" (PT)

João Próspero is a fierce admirer of Haruki Murakami’s literary work, to the point of incorporating into his music the disturbing stamp of such stories, which take place in seemingly commonplace settings, but as one turns the page become real impressionist odysseys. There is an endless parade of characters, cascading one after the other, all of them exhibiting an apparent façade of normality that quickly collapses, making way for hallucination. Those who know Murakami are aware that as far as the writer goes music is a process of constant creation, hand in hand with the plot, in endless loops of yarn balls that won’t unravel and baffle the reader the first chance they get. Sopros is the transduction of signal that João Próspero seeks between Murakami’s universe and his own process of composing music, resulting in his debut album, released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz.

Emmanuelle Bonnet Quartet (CH, DE)
In partnership with AMR - Genève

The relationship between Porta-Jazz and AMR entails sharing performances in the two annual festivals that these associations of musicians carry out, as well as two artistic residencies with participants suggested by both parties. A synergy that has been linking Porto and Geneva, and thus fostering the presentation of already established projects or the creation of new, original proposals. This year, we present the Emmanuelle Bonnet Quartet, a collective that focuses on improvisation and joint experimentation, thus carving out its discourse in the present moment through the freedom of sounds and textures.



21:30 – Block 5 – Grand Auditor
José Soares “SOMA” (PT, AR, IL)
Parceria Porta-Jazz / Guimarães Jazz #10

José Soares created the SOMA ensemble to develop the tenth edition of the artistic residency that took place in 2023 at the Guimarães Jazz festival, resulting in a performance that was recorded live and released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz.

It is a garden of beginnings, a game in which caution is left out, a leap towards creative error. It is drawing sound with one’s fingers. It is wooing the encounter.

The music explores sound as a shapeless material body, the connection between error and opportunity, the use of musical fragments as drawers of beginnings, bringing together influences from experimental, noise and contemporary music. Together with the visual artist, an immersive and enigmatic environment will be created. Aside from contemporary music, the compositions and images will be based on texts by Gonçalo M. Tavares, Robert Musil, Gaston Bachelard, Clarice Lispector and Maria Gabriela Llansol.

Now it’s time to see, or perhaps to see once again, this cross-disciplinary creative proposal by an international artistic team that raises the concept of addition in its appreciation of both the whole and the parts.

Fragoso Quinteto “Canta Derrocada” (PT)

Fragoso Quinteto is the original music group of João Fragoso, a double bass player and composer from Coimbra, who settled in Porto after a few years living in the capital. He presents Canta Derrocada, the second album with this ensemble, released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz, after Dura Natureza, in 2018, by Cena Jovem Jazz.pt.

One hears wordless songs, improvisation, timbral exploration, traits that outline the common ground between these musicians. João Fragoso develops his artistic expression with them, searching for a path between sounds and thoughts.

One hears the sublime understanding between five travellers who set off on their journey with their eyes firmly on the horizon and deprived of any safety nets other than the extreme trust they place in their courageous leader and the balance he has at his disposal on the edge of a precipice. One hears their every step in this intense, unforgettable and profound place. Canta Derrocada is the sound of a voice echoing in the endless landscape, the return of which reaches us enormously, layer after layer, lingering in time, as if memory could at one time betray us.


 
23:30 – TMP Café
Rui Miguel Abreu + jam session

DJ set by Rui Miguel Abreu, a music critic who has been active since 1989 and who currently writes for Blitz magazine, Expresso newspaper and Rimas e Batidas, the digital publication he runs, aside from being a regular contributor to the international magazine We Jazz. The author of several programmes on Antena 3, including the weekly broadcast Notas Azuis, which focuses on contemporary jazz, Rui Miguel is also an occasional DJ. A pioneer in listening to and spreading hip-hop and electronic music, he always tried to establish bridges in the musical journeys he regularly puts forward based on his internationally acclaimed album collection—he was one of the Portuguese personalities selected for the second volume of the impressive book Dust & Grooves, a work by photographer Eilon Paz that documents the global community of vinyl collectors.

From the booth, Rui Miguel Abreu will share his particular taste in music to the delight of everyone present. The evening continues with an open stage for a jam session.




02/02 sun

11:30 – Rehearsal Room
Diversão / Improvisação [Enjoyment / Improvisation]

Time. Taking it easy, knowing to wait, or else always being in a rush, with no time for this or that. What if clocks didn’t exist? Or, if they did, they could stop counting the seconds and heartbeats and thus stop dictating that we have to go? Come with us to nowhere on this journey without time where children and adults will meet there, on the plane of dreams, and where, together, we’ll be able to stop and listen, look, feel and touch. Where everything will be suspended, even what usually prevents us from trying something we’ve never done before. Could this all be improvisation?


17:00 – TMP Café - Rivoli
Coro Instantâneo [Instant Choir]

The Instant Choir will take place at TMP Café before the start of the 15th Porta-Jazz Festival’s Saturday concerts. Those who may already be at Teatro Rivoli and those interested in taking part will make up a choir as simple as this: without the need for any prior preparation, the challenge will come to use the voices that are present as instruments of an improvised ensemble. Just like that. The goal is to allow for a place to demystify the act of singing, improvising, sharing and communicating, guided by experienced singers who will lead the choir on a journey of freedom.



18:15 – Block 6 – Small Auditorium
GODUA “STOP” (PT)

The music written by Duarte Ventura and Hugo Ferreira mirrors this quartet’s search for a sonic identity, taking the concepts of space and simplicity as a starting point. In the process of creating the album they present here, which was released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz, they decided to make room to highlight the important role of the place where all the work was carried out, including rehearsals and recording—the Stop Shopping Centre, an essential hub to which many musicians in Porto converge. A quartet of young, worthy musicians with time ahead of them to present us with their views on musical construction and sharing.


Sonic Tender (PT)
In partnership with Robalo Music

Associação Robalo is a counterpart of Porta-Jazz based in Lisbon since 2015. In addition to its annual festival, it has a label, Robalo Music, which released the album presented here by Sonic Tender, Odd Objects.

The Sonic Tender trio seeks to “transmute sonic sources into a unified sound object”, and this music is in fact not limited to the interaction between the different components, but a combination of voices and their respective timbres into a single unit, made up of several layers. In this respect, although some of the sound material may allude to free music, it represents a radical break with it.




21:30 – Block 7 – Grand Auditorium
Demian Cabaud “Árbol Adentro” (AR, PT)

Titled Árbol adentro, the tenth album of the Argentinian double bass player as leader was released by Carimbo Porta-Jazz, delves into the poetic inspiration of the illustrious Octavio Paz and carries on the tradition already established by the quintet in previous ventures, characterised by musical freedom, daring improvisation and a tireless effort to push the boundaries of musical art. They masterfully embrace some elements of traditional Argentine music, harmoniously fusing them with the fluidity of contemporary jazz. The result is a truly unique musical experience that transcends cultural barriers and moves listeners. Árbol adentro stands out not only for its instrumental virtuosity, but for the quintet’s ability to capture the essence and emotional complexity of the writer’s verses. This celebration between written word and sound expression proves that music is able to amplify the beauty of poetry, merging two art forms in order to create a unique and unrepeatable experience. Demian Cabaud is a renowned musician who has been living in Portugal for twenty years, always in fruitful collaborations with musicians from the international avant-garde and in tremendously prominent projects, actively contributing to overcoming stylistic and conceptual barriers, and focusing on music as a spiritual expression of timeless sharing that comes from within to be delivered to the world in simple gestures in the form of sounds.


Ensemble Mutante #2 - Kaja Draksler

We invited the extraordinary Slovenian composer and improviser Kaja Draksler for the second edition of what we intend to be a space for on-demand creation and experimentation—Ensemble Mutante. She created a piece for piano, prepared piano, microtonal vocoder and three voices based on literary material by two American poets: Dean Young and Robert Frost. After watching the performance of Mané Fernandes’ project matriz_motriz, in the scope of the partnership between Porta-Jazz and AMR Genève, which included this concert in its annual festival, Kaja Draksler was motivated to work with the three Portuguese singers. This concert will be prepared in an artistic residency at Espaço Porta-Jazz in the days leading up to the Festival. Bringing together different musical universes, from improvised music to contemporary music, this ensemble is looking for a hybrid language with total interpretative freedom. An anti-rhetoric that is made up of the grammar of each performer, democratic in its creative process and open to contamination.


23:30 – TMP Café
Baile Swing [Swing Ball]

To bring the Festival to an end in a festive tone, the audience at TMP Café will be met with a jam session dedicated to the swing style, inviting anyone who wants to join the ball. The goal is to create a moment of leisure and conviviality to mark the end of the 15th Porta-Jazz Festival with intense energy and the good mood that always arises in this context.

Ficha Técnica

  • Joana Raquel "Queda Áscua" (PT)
    Voice and composition Joana Raquel
    Flute Teresa Costa
    Clarinete and guitar Rafael Santos
    Guitar Joaquim Festas
    Double bass João Fragoso 
    Guests
    Piano Miguel Meirinhos 
    Drums Gonçalo Ribeiro
    Drums Zé Stark

    Agustí Fernández / Liudas Mock?nas (ES, LT)
    Piano Agustí Fernández
    Saxophones Liudas Mock?nas

    Marques/Cabaud feat O'Gallagher & Williams "Wabi-sabi" (PT, AR, US)
    Trumpet Gonçalo Marques
    Alto saxophone John O’Gallagher
    Double bass Demian Cabaud
    Drums Jeff Williams 

    ESMAE JAZZ + jam session
    Trompete Vasco Sousa
    Guitarra João Senra
    Vibrafone Guilherme Guedes
    Double bass Duarte Júlio
    Drums João Rocha

    PAIRA (PT, ES)
    Trumpet João Pedro Dias 
    Tenor saxophone Gil Silva
    Double bass Pedro Molina
    Drums Gonçalo Ribeiro

    How Noisy Are The Rooms? (DE, CH, AT)
    Voice Almut Kühne
    Turntables Joke Lanz
    Drums and electronics Alfred Vogel

    João Próspero “Sopros” (PT) 
    Guitar Joaquim Festas 
    Piano Miguel Meirinhos 
    Double bass and composition João Próspero
    Drums Gonçalo Ribeiro

    Emmanuelle Bonnet Quartet (CH, DE)
    Voice and composition Emmanuelle Bonnet 
    Piano Alvin Schwaar 
    Double bass Tabea Kind 
    Drums Lucas Zibulski

  • José Soares “SOMA” (PT, AR, IL)
    Alto saxophone and voice José Soares
    Piano e synthesizerJosé Diogo Martins
    Double bass Omer Govreen
    Drums João Lopes Pereira
    Visual arts Várvara Tazelaar

    Fragoso Quinteto “Canta Derrocada” (PT)
    Trumpet João Almeida 
    Saxophone Albert Cirera 
    Guitar João Carreiro
    Double bass and composition João Fragoso
    Drums Miguel Rodrigues 

    Diversão / Improvisação
    Voice Joana Raquel
    Vibraphone Ricardo Coelho 
    Double bass Xavier Nunes
    Drums Eduardo Carneiro Dias
    Mediation Mariana Vergueiro 

    Coro Instantâneo
    Direction Almut Kühne

    GODUA “STOP” (PT) 
    Guitar Hugo Ferreira
    Vibraphone Duarte Ventura
    Double bass João Fragoso
    Drums João Cardita

    Sonic Tender (PT)

    Guitar João Carreiro
    Piano Guilherme Aguiar
    Drums João Valinho

    Demian Cabaud “Árbol Adentro” (AR, PT) 
    Alto and soprano saxophones João Pedro Brandão
    Tenor Saxophone José Pedro Coelho
    Piano Grilo 
    Double bass and composition Demian Cabaud
    Drums Marcos Cavaleiro

    Ensemble Mutante #2 - Kaja Draksler
    Piano and composition Kaja Draksler
    Voice Mariana Dionísio, Sofia Sá, Vera Morais

    Baile Swing
    Piano Ricardo Moreira 
    Double bass Yudit Almeida 
    Drums João Ribeiro

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