Jazz em Agosto 2025

Jazz em Agosto
Gulbenkian Foundation
Lisbon, Portugal
August 1-10, 2025

Despite the "onda de calor" which hit it, Lisbon remains as peaceful as ever in its saturnine routine—even though invasive tourism in the Baixa neighborhood has already changed its appearance, and not for the better.

August, however, is also the jazz month in the Portuguese capital—a time for exploratory, avant-garde sounds, leaning heavily toward electronics at the newly renovated Gulbenkian Foundation—with architecture by Kengo Kuma—which hosted the 41st edition of Jazz em Agosto under the artistic direction of Rui Neves.

The opening days were dedicated to the trio format, a classic configuration in improvised music. The trios, however, could not have been more different—starting with the masters William Parker, Cooper-Moore, and Hamid Drake. Dubbed as the Heart Trio, they delivered an emotional immersion into acoustic world-music meant as a call for cultural resistance against the homogenization surrounding us. Parker did not even bring his bass, surrounding himself with flutes from various traditions—the Moroccan guimbri, the Armenian duduk and the doussou ngoni. Cooper-Moore, long known for his self-built instruments, played his diddley-bow chordophone, along with a sort of electrified violin and an enchantingly voiced xylophone. Drake was the only one sporting a conventional jazz set—his drums—thankfully providing energy to a repertoire that might otherwise have felt static and moody.

Witnessing such endeavors, the same questions from years past inevitably arise: how far can the appropriation of remote musical legacies (African, Asian, Aboriginal) go when filtered through a Western lens—even a heterodox one like the African-American tradition? The debate remains open, but there is no question that the lingua franca of this trio is grounded in sincerity, in active inner reworking, and in an unquestionable class that looks unflinchingly toward the unfinished aesthetic legacy of Don Cherry. There is also a degree of self-indulgence, but several polyrhythmic sequences and Cooper-Moore's constant inventiveness ensured the set's success.

Plenty of Don Cherry's imprint could also be heard in the Portuguese trio led by trumpeter Luis Vicente, presenting Come Down Here (Clean Feed, 2024). Vicente is no virtuoso in the conventional sense—his expression is somewhat introverted, emerging gradually through improvisations that evolve from sparse themes, sometimes derived from Portuguese or Brazilian folklore, sometimes from simple rhythmic pirouettes suggestive of Ornette Coleman, where the fragile, slightly acidic trumpet tone leads unguarded, exquisitely melodic passages. Vicente could rely on the rhythmic assurance of drummer Pedro Melo Alves and the sumptuous bass of Gonçalo Almeida, who also contributed brilliant solo interventions.

Black music and free-form singing were also the territory of alto saxophonist Darius Jones, who—alongside Chris Lightcap on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums—brought the repertoire of Legend of èBoy: The Hypervigilant Eye (Aum Fidelity, 2024) to life with impressive formal coherence. Jones managed to balance the music's varied colors—dark and gritty, clear and fluid, even sunlit in a touching ballad—by juxtaposing a primal blues sensibility with a more conceptual, reticular approach to writing. Jones often keeps the roles distinct: a rhythm section in unceasing turbulence, while the sax unfolds themes in long, repeated notes, with or without vibrato, building density and wrapping the listener in a torrent of phrases. Sometimes Julius Hemphill comes to mind, other times Arthur Blythe, but Darius Jones now stands as a contemporary master in his own right. Lightcap and Cleaver were flawless in this triangulation.

A similar interplay emerged in another trio—this time with piano and rhythm section—led by Canadian pianist Kris Davis with Robert Hurst on bass, and Johnathan Blake on drums, presenting material from the acclaimed album Run the Gauntlet (Pyroclastic Records, 2024) along with new compositions.

The group draws from multiple piano-trio jazz grammars without being dominated by any, imposing instead its own rhythmic perspective that distances it from the classical-modern model privileging melody. In this sense, Davis perhaps takes a step back as a pianist to foreground her arranger's philosophy, fully aware of having two instrumental giants beside her. Hurst and Blake are exceptional, the latter an indefatigable juggler of drums and cymbals—physically still yet hyperkinetic at the kit, using two snare drums of different pitches. A concert of notable substance, though a touch distant emotions-wise.

It was a thoughtful choice for the festival to dedicate one evening to a young Portuguese ensemble. This year, that honor went to bassist Joao Prospero's quartet, which performed a cycle of themes inspired by the novels of Haruki Murakami. Beneath an appearance of tranquility, transparency and gentleness, there were moments of surprise and bite, courtesy of drummer Gonçalo Ribeiro, pianist Miguel Meirinhos and guitarist Joaquim Festas.

On another front, many concerts focused on new electronics, sonic manipulation, and stylistic hybridization. Rafael Toral confirmed a solid artistic personality, constructing a sonic cathedral from his guitar, whose electronically transformed sounds layered into what could resemble a resonating pipe organ in a Gothic church. Theremin inflections did the rest, though the set suffered from excessive length. Toral will open the Biennale Musica this October with an expanded ensemble.

The Anglo-Iranian Mariam Rezaei was an impressive figure, commanding an immense sonic arsenal from two turntables and electronics, sculpted through a frenetic yet coherent montage—first unaccompanied, then joined by guitarist Julien Desprez's noise textures and Lukas König, who flawlessly played the drums like a machine gun.

Desprez and Konig returned with vocalist Audrey Chen for their Mopcut project, joined by American rapper MC Dalek and by Moor Mother.

The set—crafted from mysterious atmospheres and driven toward a paroxysmal climax—played on the dichotomy between Chen's abstract virtuosity and Moor Mother—the latter in dazzling form—with her dramatic delivery. Konig maintained a suffocating, rock-oriented groove that held together the Babel of languages, producing a patchwork of immense enjoyment, if somewhat overextended in duration.

The X-Rai Hex Tet project blended and intertwined very different atmospheres within a fascinating electroacoustic system. The scene was that of British experimentation, with Pat Thomas (piano, electronics), Seymour Wright (alto sax), Paul Abbott and Crystabel Riley (drums), Billy Steiger (celesta and violin), and Edward George (electronics, spoken word).

Driven by fragmented pulses from the two drum kits, the music floated in a refined interplay that underscored George's historical narrative—focused on early 18th-century British colonization and its consequent slavery—with a sense of estrangement.

Within this horizontal music, between ascetic silences and pointillist flurries, Wright's parasitic saxophone sounds stood out—unyielding, anti-narrative, yet razor-sharp.

On the opposite end stood Ahleuchatistas, a trio whose math-rock vision has been obsessively built over many years on the repetition of guitar arpeggios and riffs (Shane Parish), which create a clockwork spiral effect with minimal pauses. Their influences range from King Crimson to John Zorn's block compositions—think Zorn's Simulacrum—though perhaps the influence here is reversed, as Ahleuchatistas have over two decades of activity. Alongside metronomic drummer Danny Piechocki, bassist Trevor Dunn was in top form—always a delight to hear, even when the set's second half flirted with monotony.

Parish returned the next day for a solo acoustic guitar set at the Grande Auditorium, this time with a repertoire of standards—pure delight.

In the same venue, the duo of Elias Stemeseder (keyboards, electronics) and Christian Lillinger (drums) presented their freshly minted work, Antumbra.

Brooklyn's scene was represented by two of its brightest stars: the trio Thumbscrew and, closing the festival, Patricia Brennan's septet.

Thumbscrew's rapport is now second nature. Though an egalitarian trio, Michael Formanek's bass often sets the structural tone: predetermined, slightly cool writing that opens into a three-way conversation over swing, tango, waltz—each refracted through the masterful inventiveness of the soloists. Mary Halvorson played her guitar with measured cool, except for a sudden, ferocious burst of distortion; Tomas Fujiwara was a sensitive and effective presence at the drums (and vibraphone), and Formanek was colossal on bass. A warmly received set, capped by a smiling encore of Charles Mingus's "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, then Blue Silk."

Patricia Brennan is the composer of the moment in the avant-jazz scene, following the unanimous acclaim for Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic Records, 2024), performed in full at the festival's closing concert. Brennan is a marvelous musician—an inventive vibraphonist but here above all a brilliant composer of intense, engaging music that should not be mistaken for a postmodern take on Afro-Latin tradition. It is essentially rhythmic—indeed, polyrhythmic—but contains a wealth of subtexts that surface in every sequence, propelled by a dream ensemble, equally perfect in its "dancing" dimension and in the nuanced intimacy of vibrant chamber interplay. Every member deserves mention: Patricia Brennan, Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Jon Irabagon and Mark Shim (saxophones), Kim Cass (bass), Dan Weiss (drums), and Keisel Jimenez (percussion). This was their only European date.

Thus concluded Jazz em Agosto—with yet another sold-out edition, impeccable organization, and artistic success that only grew as the days went by.

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