Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2025

Jazzfestival Saalfelden
Various venues
Land Salzburg, Austria
August 21-24, 2025

One hundred and ninety artists from twenty-six countries, nearly thirty thousand attendees, eight different venues, more than sixty concerts, and a record number of tickets sold. These are just numbers, but they confirm how the Saalfelden Jazz Festival—now in its forty-fifth edition—draws audiences from across Europe, remains deeply rooted in its territory, and channels resources and energy thanks to the active participation of the entire community.

Since its early editions, the festival's artistic programming has been a reliable litmus test of the state of jazz and its many offshoots, with numerous high points (many), a steady stream of world premieres, and the occasional inevitable misstep. This year's program—consistent with recent editions—didn't look sensational on paper, but it definitely offered a very solid mix of marquee events and potential surprises. Here's our view, in deliberately scattered order.

One of the festival's most anticipated events did not disappoint, ranking among its absolute peaks. Weird of Mouth—Mette Rasmussen on saxophone, Craig Taborn on piano, Ches Smith on drums—electrified the audience with a single extended piece that pushed sonic exploration to its limits. They played with intensity, veering between furious whirlwinds and miraculous rhythmic-timbral balances. Taborn and Smith wove daring structures, soloists and accompanists at once, laying down a shifting terrain for Rasmussen's eruptive power, marked by dynamic control, a stunning sound, and boundless inventiveness. The canons of free music and improvisation at their most exalted.

Patricia Brennan appeared with two very different ensembles. The first was the luxury septet behind her much-praised Breaking Stretch. What we heard was highly organized music, rooted in a compositional language shaped by the leader's dual heritage (Mexico and New York), and placing greater emphasis on structured performance over improvisation. The frontline of Jon Irabagon, Mark Shim, and Adam O'Farrill left one curious about how much further their voices could have been explored. Brennan focused primarily on musical direction and crafting an overall soundscape, within which bassist Kim Cass shone brilliantly. The trio with Dutch bassist Jort Terwijn and drummer Christian Lillinger confirmed Brennan's ability to move comfortably across different contexts, and her soloing stood out in a mix of rhythmic exuberance and timbral precision, skewed lines and melodic turns.

Exit Knarr is the latest project of volcanic Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, a sextet committed to free improvisation while borrowing from hard rock, heavy metal, and more. The results were ultimately not especially original, save for the leader's usual eruptive drive.

Laura Jurd, the much-acclaimed British trumpeter and composer, and a flagship artist of Edition Records, brought her newest band, Rites & Revelations, to the festival's mainstage. Thanks in part to Irish violinist Ultan O Brien, the music leaned toward jazz-folk, with Jurd's own Scottish roots also coming through. Popular themes and jazz improvisation, played with taste and elegance, shaped a set that was light yet never frivolous. A brooding, grainy, almost apocalyptic crescendo on Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" alone made the concert unforgettable.

With Danish-born guitarist Teis Semey we may have encountered the festival's surprise. He delivered an explosive set at the Gruberhalle, a repurposed industrial space popular with younger crowds, fronting a sextet that featured Jim Black on drums and Adam O’Farrill on trumpet. The following day, he confirmed his talent on the mainstage. His blend of jazz, indie rock, killer riffs, and lightning improvisations brimmed with energy, fresh ideas, organization, and imaginative leadership. His guitar work—both solo and accompanying—was at times brilliant, while the horns meshed superbly: the exuberant alto of José Soares and the cool restraint of tenor Jesse Schilderink, buoyed by the powerful drumming of Sun Mi Hong.

The Korean-born drummer returned at the helm of the Bida Orchestra, a sextet of leading figures from Europe's improvising scene. Yet despite the ensemble's caliber, the project felt uneven. An opening section of whispery textures and fleeting harmonizations was swept aside by a blistering solo from bassist John Edwards, which lit the fuse. From there, the music gained shape and direction, with sharper dynamics and a furious, beautiful alto voice from Mette Rasmussen.

And then came the concert that defined the festival's forty-fifth edition. Love it or hate it, skeptic or enthusiast, this was an absolute one-off. [Ahmed], a band comprised of Pat Thomas on piano, Seymour Wright on alto saxophone, Joel Grip on bass, Antonin Gerbal on drums (from the Cafe Oto orbit)—performed a single piece: "African Bossa Nova" by Ahmed Abdul-Malik. One uninterrupted hour: radical, obsessive, unsettling, fierce, uncompromising, monolithic. The music unfolded through minute variations and imperceptible yet relentless shifts, driven by the perpetual churn of bass and drums, the furious clusters of piano, and the implacable, rasping alto sax, hypnotic in its serial repetitions. Music without a net or barriers, but with razor-sharp intent: free yet steeped in the lineage of African-American music, refracted into another dimension—stunning and thought-provoking.

Argentinian pianist Leo Genovese was the festival's "everywhere" musician, appearing in no fewer than four performances—though none truly memorable. Both the Eyes to the Sun Trio with Camila Nebbia on saxophone and Alfred Vogel on drums, and the expanded Bezau Beatz Orchestra of Good Hope, presented a dated strain of free improvisation, with little in the way of unexpected turns or particularly engaging developments. His duo with vocalist Andreas Schaerer and his trio with Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima never rose above a calligraphic exercise.

The trio Hiit, featuring Simone Quatrana on piano, Andrea Grossi on bass, and Pedro Melo Alves on drums played a measured set, marked by careful attention to detail, balancing density and space, and drawing on more than one root from twentieth-century music.

The performance by Tomoki Sanders, son of the great Pharoah, was all about fun and theatrical flair. Charismatic in engaging the audience, he mixed fusion sonorities, pyrotechnic solos, and danceable riffs. It's a heavy legacy and his artistic path is still evolving.

Less convincing than expected was the quartet Ancient to the Future with Ava Mendoza on guitar, Hamid Drake on drums, Xhosa Cole on saxophone and flute, and Majid Bekkas on gimbri. The clear reference to Art Ensemble Of Chicago aesthetics remained largely nominal: the music revolved around the interplay between an electrified gimbri and avant-guitar, veering between rock and noise, with Drake's customary exuberance and Cole's fragile presence on sax. The result was an in-between hybrid, struggling to take off, save for occasional solos by Mendoza.

The festival's closing slot went to The Bad Plus with Craig Taborn and Chris Potter. A finale of great class and great music—the repertoire of the American quartet of Keith Jarrett is itself a guarantee, but the four musicians on stage brought much more: superb interplay, extraordinary sensitivity, creative respect for the material, and fresh ideas in their solo flights. Their rendition of "Silence" was worth remembering.

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