16.º Festival Porta-Jazz

PROGRAMME

6/02 fri

18:15 – Bloco 1 – Subpalco

José Vale "Summer School" (PT)
Summer School is a sound experience that delves into the roots of experimental jazz. Inspired by iconic compositions by Thelonious Monk, where we find angular melodies, tension-filled silences and disconcerting harmonies, it intertwines with the free and atonal spirit of Ornette Coleman. The result is an open and chaotic performance, where the themes are starting points for creation in the present moment. These are not reinterpretations, but reincarnations, with the names Monk and Ornette being summoned not as styles, but as attitudes. The group immerses itself in a dialogue where form and freedom collide. The musicians do not follow structures, but rather impulses, listening and responding in real time to the provocations of the collective. It is a ritual.

Littorina Saxophone Quartet “Leaking Pipes”(LT, EE, FI, SE) - in partnership with Improdimensija
Littorina Saxophone Quartet is a new creative collective of improvising saxophonists from the Baltic Sea area: Maria Faust from Estonia, Mikko Innanen from Finland, Fredrik Ljungkvist from Sweden and Liudas Mockūnas from Lithuania. ‘Littorina’ comes from the ancient name of the sea connecting the four saxophonists, and their music reflects this territorial, and consequently musical, connection. We thus find in their sound both memories of ancestral and modern music, which can be bitter and sweet, energetic and calm, and pure and toxic—just like the Baltic Sea.

21:30 – Bloco 2 – Grande Auditório

Mané Fernandes “sQuigg: playground_etiQuette” CD release (PT, IT, NO)
sQuigg: playground_etiQuette is a conceptual album in which the elastic, colourful and absurd compositional universe of Mané Fernandes is challenged in each track by different improvisers from various areas of Portuguese and European creative music (from jazz and improvised music to electronic music). The modus operandi continues to be the creative cycle of improvisation-composition-recording-post-production-improvisation, now also incorporating the specificities of each of the participating improvisers. On this album, which will be premiered at the Festival, Mané Fernandes focuses on the flexibility and multidimensional nature of the ‘playground’ as a creative space. Similar to ENTER THE sQUIGG, stylistic barriers between jazz, instrumental hip-hop and electronic music are blurred, now expanding the range of perspectives and aesthetic and cultural backgrounds.

Ursa Maior (Porta-Jazz ensemble)
Ursa Maior was a project designed specifically for the 15th edition of the Porta-Jazz Festival, which we are now continuing. This project brings together a small crowd of musicians linked to Porta-Jazz in a monumental ensemble that reflects the ambition, the bustling movement and the collective spirit characteristic of this community. In this second edition, the focus will be on exploring the voice, with all participating musicians invited to make use of theirs, in an exuberant celebration of communion and sharing.

23:30 – TMP Café

ESMAE JAZZ + jam session


7/02 sat

15:00 – TMP Café

Instant Drumming
Instant Drumming will make its debut at the 16th Porta-Jazz Festival. Similar to the Instant Choir that we witnessed at the previous edition, this ensemble will meet in the early afternoon on Saturday at the TMP Café to spontaneously, and without any prior preparation, embark on a journey where interaction, exploration and improvisation prevail. Under the direction of drummers Eduardo Carneiro Dias and Acácio Salero, the entire audience will have the opportunity to participate and be part of this Festival, emphasising the community spirit that characterises it.

16:00 – Bloco 3 – Palco do Grande Auditório

Almut Kühne/ João Pedro Brandão/ Marcos Cavaleiro "Stones and Seeds" CD release (DE, PT)
“STONES fossilised life in :silence: turning into :sound: resonating into the :space: scratched by thursty SEEDS lusting for :the sound of life: in a STONE resonating into :silence: calling to listen to the :inside: calling for :sound: resonating :walls: formulating :space: sculpted by STONES AND SEEDS.”
The three musicians explore reverb and resonance as both sonic and existential forces considering how sound reflects space, how emotion shapes vibration, how presence leaves traces. Stones carry the memory of the past, while Seeds embody the future. This project is an invitation to attune ourselves, to perceive resonance not just as vibration, but as relationship: between body and environment, past and future, self and other.

SATT + Olga Reznichenko (DE, CH, AT, RU) - in partnership with Bezau Beatz
SATT is no ordinary trio. It is a powerful electroacoustic sound experience that transcends the boundaries of improvisation. Composed of Beatdenker on guitar and a thousand samples, Christian Weber on bass, which proves unpredictable, and Alfred Vogel on drums with his driving energy, the ensemble creates ecstatic soundscapes that are psychedelic, intense, cathartic. SATT’s music lives at the intersection of avant-garde improvisation, electronic sound exploration and raw rhythmic energy. Each performance is an act of the present moment: spontaneous, surprising, uncompromising. This concert will feature special guest Olga Reznichenko on piano and keyboards.

18:15 – Bloco 4 – Pequeno Auditório

Pedro Neves "Northern Train" (PT, ES)
Northern Train is Pedro Neves’ new album, on which his usual trio—that also features José Marrucho on drums and Miguel Ângelo on double bass—is joined by Galician trumpeter Javier Pereiro. As Mário Azevedo describes it, Northern Train suggests a space-time of escape, far beyond the merely geographical or musical. It is an imaginary journey—a kind of journey through the interior of each one of us—that falls within the realm of reverie and sensory experience, evoking in the listener inner images, diffuse memories and many, many indeterminate emotions. Contrary to the usual, Pedro Neves creates the conditions for each of us to do our inner work and project them, making us all invention, creation, interpretation and reception accomplices, sharing a bold sound-sensitive experience.

Ensemble Mutante - Zé Stark “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (PT/ES/CU)
“Inspired by James Baldwin’s debut work, Go Tell It on the Mountain is a project that establishes a dialogue between musical creation and the novel itself. Although John Grimes and I have utterly incomparable backgrounds, I still find aspects that connect me to the protagonist. In a pursuit of self-discovery. In questioning the social issues in which he is immersed. In confronting his spirituality. In a search for redemption and integration. A concert that reflects the influences I have devoured over the last year and a half, not only musical, but also cultural and literary.”

21:30 – Bloco 5 – Grande Auditório

KOHELET | Ricardo Coelho 5tet [PT]
Kohelet is vibraphonist Ricardo Coelho’s first album. It was released in 2025 by Carimbo Porta-Jazz. “Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow back to you. But divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead. When clouds are heavy, the rains come down. Whether a tree falls north or south, it stays where it falls. Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest. Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both. Light is sweet; how pleasant to see a new day dawning. When people live to be very old, let them rejoice in every day of life. But let them also remember there will be many dark days. Everything still to come is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes, 11: 1-8)
I don’t know if it was the water, but something sprang forth inside me. Deluded? Perhaps…

Vera Morais EUPNEA, CD release (PT, NL, LV)
Eupnea is a vocal and flute ensemble led by singer and composer Vera Morais—a hybrid project that brings together singers and flutists from diverse backgrounds, from European avant-jazz to improvised music to contemporary music. In a kind of unpretentious, human and immersive chamber music, the similarities between the two instruments are celebrated: the timbre, the tessitura, the sound production processes and the symbolism associated with the voice and the flute in the canons of Western music (the woman, the bird). More than a group of separate musicians, Eupnea is an instrument in itself: a human pipe organ, breathing sonic interdependence.

23:30 – TMP Café

Rui Miguel Abreu + jam session


8/02 sun

11:30 – Foyer do Pequeno Auditório

Family Concert
We glide and then we find Earth, but seen from the air. A new perspective, a journey fuelled by questions, perhaps different because we cannot see in such detail. Guided by imagination and fuelled by the unknown, we oscillate between distance and proximity, the concrete and the abstract, we blend with the air itself, we propagate sound and transform ourselves into music. We can see through our own eyes, through the voices of others and through miniature landscapes, creating new universes.

15:00 – TMP Café

Conservatório de Música do Porto + ART’J

16:00 – Bloco 6 – Pequeno Auditório

Sérgio Tavares e Renato Diz "Between Time and Now"
Between Time and Now hurtles through eighteen years of kinship between Renato and Sérgio. Each moment evolves in the confluence of innocent minds lost in thoughts, crystallising the memory, eventually unwavering in the acceptance of rumours uttered by celestial bodies and the irresistible will to create through shared surprises, discoveries and disquiets. This work exists in a dual meaning amidst balances and contradictions, at times permanent, at times agile, and perpetually roaming between controlled shadows and untouchable silence.

João Martins "Oxímoro" (PT)
Oximoro is an album that delves into contradictions and paradoxes, reflecting the tension between opposites. The album explores the constant search for balance between chaos and harmony. The tracks unfold with creative freedom, with the musicians indulging in spontaneous improvisations, creating unpredictable soundscapes that reinforce the idea that the unexpected and the planned can coexist. The title Oximoro evokes precisely this merging of contradictions as moments of calm that explode in intensity, or dissonance that sorts itself out into beauty. An album where silence and sound intertwine and that celebrates beauty in imperfection.

18:15 – Bloco 7 – Palco do Grande Auditório

AP "Lado Umbilical" (PT)
Lado Umbilical is guitarist and composer AP’s latest album, in which he challenges himself to take bolder paths and explores new composition and improvisation tools. With an emphasis on rhythm, on the simple exploration of sounds, textures and timbres through free improvisation, but also giving prominence to the written component, the aim is always to tell a story through music. As Rui Teixeira describes, Lado Umbilical emerges from boundaries, grows, manifests itself and thus asserts itself, in an opposition that is sometimes subtle, sometimes fierce, to the limits of music, to the limits of humanity. It transcends and expands barriers in a captivating and precious balance between thoughtful lyrical rationalism and impetuous musical and romantic self-determination. This album features the musical maturity of João Pedro Brandão, Gil Silva, Miguel Meirinhos and Gonçalo Ribeiro, who give voice to a narrative that aims to be different, fresh and surprising every time it is told.

Hristo Goleminov “Diagonal Shift" (PT, LV, US, IT) - parceria Orbits
Diagonal Shift is a quartet led by saxophonist and composer Hristo Goleminov, which includes some of the most prominent improvisers from several generations of the Amsterdam music scene: Ketija Ringa-Karahona on flute and alto flute, Michael Moore on clarinet and Federico Calcagno on bass clarinet. Composed solely of woodwind instruments, the quartet draws on Goleminov's enigmatic compositional language, crafting spaces where each member’s ideas intertwine and flourish.

21:30 – Bloco 8 – Grande Auditório

Hery Paz "Fisuras" (CU, PT, AR) - parceria Guimarães Jazz
Fisuras [Fissures] emerges from the quiet tension between presence and absence, where poetry transcends language and sound inhabits the space between words. This work draws from the invisible architecture of text, the fragile scaffolding, the breath, the fractures that hold meaning in place. These fissures are not fixed ideas, but rather unfolding rituals. With each iteration, they transform into something new: a constellation of memories and gestures, suspended in the space between intention and chance.

Felix Hauptmann “Serpentine” (DE, FR) - parceria NICA
The music of Serpentine combines abstraction and aesthetics, exploring the spectrum between chamber music reduction and utmost density. Pianist and composer Felix Hauptmann’s compositions showcase the ensemble’s full tonal range of this ensemble and play with the ambivalence between rhythmic complexity and constant pulse. The musicians create independent sound spaces, carried by lyrical melodies. Hauptmann exploits the diverse possibilities of the instrumentation, as well as the playful versatility of his fellow musicians. Serpentine premiered in late summer 2024 at the schwere reiter in Munich and, alongside the Trio Percussion (featuring Roger Kintopf and Leif Berger) and a duo with pianist Kirke Karja, forms an essential part of his latest artistic expression.

23:30 – TMP Café

Pedro Tenreiro + jam session