Festa do Jazz

Festa do Jazz
December 6 – 8, 2024
Lisbon (Belém) Portugal
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Covering all aspects of the contemporary Jazz scene can be difficult, but the 22nd edition of Portugal’s Festa do Jazz made a valiant try. Taking place in the comfortable surroundings of the smaller, soft-seated concert hall of the massive, multi-functional Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) a westerly suburb of Lisbon, the nine groups featured over three days in early December included mainstream, contemporary and avant-garde Jazz as well as ethnic and pop offshoots.

In terms of traditional formats, the trio lead by Tunisian-born pianist Wajdi Riahi impressed when it played on the festival’s final afternoon. Perfectly balanced in their relaxed sound interpretations, the trio with Belgian associates bassist Basile Rahola and drummer Pierre Hurty, quickly achieved Jazz syncopation with solid bass string pops, hand-patting on drum tops and sympathetic 10-fingered keyboard pumps.
Yet even as soon as the three settled into a defined swing groove, Riahi angled a voice mike towards himself and to change the dynamics briefly chanted in Arabic or whistled a contrapuntal melody.
Opening up the set to sprightly interpretations, space was also made for Rahola’s emphasized slides down his strings, mallet pops and hard rebounds from Hurty, and pivots to modal glissandi and emphasized pedal-point from Riahi before the three returned to reflective and relaxed pacing.


A more conventional approach to the formula was presented the previous day by Norwegian pianist Liv Andrea Hauge’s trio with Georgia Wartel Collins (bass) and August Glännestrand (drums) kicking off Saturday night’s program. Powerfully, Hauge’s usually exposed multi-note expositions and emphasized carefully positioned single notes during theme development. Rarely using such techniques as stopped keys, she instead focused on speedy, mostly foot-tapping motions, with asides that suggested familiar melodies.
Snatches of popular tunes and styles occasionally surfaced, but that resulted in interludes that were more like polite Bop or reticent barrel house than her more original themes. Economical with her arco work, Collins concentrated on pizzicato timekeeping, adding to the melodic swing emphasis, while Glännestrand did the same with cymbal-chiming and unforced drum shuffles.



Two pianists who took keyboard invention a little further afield followed one another Saturday afternoon at the CCB. They were Guilherme Aguiar, part of the all-Portuguese Sonic Tender trio with guitarist João Carreiro and drummer João Valinho; and later, fellow Portuguese Joana Sá, whose prepared piano emphasis was an important aspect of her duet with improvising Greek vocalist Savina Yannatou.
As Sonic Tender’s Valinho worked out uncommon timbres using the tip of a wooden drumstick, a putty knife on drum tops, plus ratcheting a violin bow on his cymbal’s surface, and Carreiro set up a string ostinato as he slowly moved up the scale, Aguiar sometimes torqued a single piano note to stop-time inferences or pushed the entire keyboard onto sweeping piano cascades. As group intensity surged upwards along with the tempo, palm-stopped guitar frails and serrated drum thumps added to the distending timbral tension. Finally as the drummer limited himself to percussion rolls and cymbal projections, a forestalled duet between folksy clawhammer-like guitar licks and the pianist’s key clips plus inner-string rustling attained a polyphonic cluster.
This was a profound instance of tough chamber improv at its most elevated.



With different objects vibrating on top of her piano’s internal string set, the dialog set up between Joana Sá and Savina Yannatou was as much capture and release as call and response. Clad in a long dress, the vocalist’s Lady Macbeth-like theatrical gestures and sinister growls often sounded as much like cursing as crooning. Her vocals ranged from folkloric inferences to speaking in tongues.
Still, the pianist’s piano harp string vibrations and darkened keyboard echoes appropriately complemented those turns. When Yannatou traded retches, yelps and freighted whispers for bel canto approximations, Sá switched to lyrical mode, even creating some feathery harpsichord-like plinks from piano vibrations. Comfortable in both roles, Sá enriched the singer’s persona, which was that of rhapsodic diva and raunchy sound designer at various times.
While parallelism was paramount between the two improvisers, the pianist ensured that her role was not merely as accompanist. During freighted interludes, she stopped notes and chimed patterns from the keyboard and proclaimed her own sonic belligerence by whapping a wooden mallet onto the strings. To lighten the dramatic discourse, at points she also squeaked a child’s toy for levity.


Levity appeared to be in rather short supply at the CCB during the festival’s three days. There was no argument with the skill and talent exhibited by the mainstream bands featured in other sets, but the sheer joy of profound improvisation seemed missing. This poignancy affected two Portuguese groups which wrapped up the festival Sunday night and the featured Anglo-American duo which was played the final set on Saturday.
The local groups were a nine-piece configuration led by local vibraphonist Duarte Ventura, and the all-star Ensemble Festa do Jazz. The international guests were veteran UK saxophonist Andy Shepherd and Aaron Parks, a younger pianist from the U.S.



Over all though, it was Ventura’s ensemble that seemed most interested in moving past traditional structures. That’s because many of the tunes depended on the alternating the vocals of Joana Raquel and Marta Rodrigues with motifs from alto saxophonist Miguel Valente, pianist Miguel Meirinhos, cellist Adèle Viret, bassist Zé Almeida, drummer Luís Possollo and percussionist Iúri Oliveira.
While the singers sometimes harmonized in choir-like fashion, each projected a different identity. One concentrated mainly on soprano-pitched lyricism, while the other occasionally interrupted her long lines to scat. At points contrasts were stressed, as when cello slices and buzzes intertwined with vocal tessitura, or when wordless vocalizing was further boosted with resonating, four-mallet vibe ornamentation.



For the most part however, the ensemble stuck to a program of modified swing, underlined by slinky walking bass lines, stressed drum accents, and unforced conga drum pops. Brief diversions into variations on intermediate minimalism quickly defaulted to a responsive groove. When the tempo ascended on some tunes there were also dynamic sequences of harsh alto sax peeps and slurs, along with steadying syncopation from the pianist.
Cohesive and contemporary, the all-star Ensemble Festo do Jazz projected individuality, especially when rocketing flute trills were layered on top of concentrated doits and vibrations from the two saxophones. As good as the individual playing was of João Mortágua (alto saxophone), Bernardo Tinoco (tenor saxophone), Clara Saleiro (flutes), José Diogo Martins (piano), Francisco Brito (bass) and João Pereira (drums) however, collectively sparks didn’t really fly.
On their own Tinoco’s playing seemed to affiliate with the Cool School, while Mortágua’s was a bit more adventurous, as when he demonstrated extended techniques such as tongue slaps. Pereira kept the backbeat going whereas Brito’s pizzicato bass fillips and arco slides matched up with metallic rubs on the piano keys that added more excitement to the interactions.






Applying piano color, whether in adagio balladic mode or with livelier key resonation, Aaron Parks’ straight-ahead comping was the perfect complement to Andy Sheppard’s saxophone expression during Festa do Jazz’s concluding Saturday night set.
Sometimes advancing his playing with foot stomps, Sheppard nimbly shifted from soprano to tenor saxophone and back again, often on the same tune, to vibrate the proper notes from each. Guttural growls expertly followed vibrating high pitches as the saxophonist matched careful keyboard vibrations, sometimes pushing out unaccented air, flutter-tonguing or buzzing emphasized smears from his reed. Although Park’s shift from pedal-point to a clipping swing motif at the set’s end cemented the musical groove, a tacit separation rather than deep connection was implied throughout the duo’s meeting.


Besides these bands, two other groups based around vocals were featured, albeit with programs that would perhaps have been more appropriate for Rock-focused celebrations.

More a show than a set, Jazzopa, a local nonet, was nonetheless sincere its program. In spite of the band’s name though, arrangements seemed to harken back to such 1970s Rock horn bands as Chicago or Blood, Sweat & Tears rather than Jazz ensembles. Instrumental expression from Francisco Bettencourt (alto saxophone and flute), André Silvestre (trumpet), Gonçalo Diogo Morais (guitar), João Pedro Melão (keyboards), Fillipe Padrão (drums) and guitarist Rodrigo Lima was clean and professional, but apparently the result of chart-reading rather than cerebral revelations.
Moreover, the eye-catching floor-length dresses and show band-like emphasis of the three female vocalists sometimes detracted from the sincere presentation they offered. Still, Nitry’s vocals and stage movements seemed oriented towards Rap and R&B rather than Jazz; Mariana Bonito’s spoken word declarations were more interludes than integration and sound more theatrical than musical; while Razy, who alternated vocalizing with playing funk chords on electric bass, demonstrated more versatility than passion.

Even less prepossessing was Sarab, which opened the festival on Friday night. Fronted by Syrian vocalist Climène Zarkan, the five-piece band, whose name means mirage in Arabic, featured trombonist Robinson Khoury, Thibault Gomez on keyboards, guitarist Baptiste Ferrandis, drummer Paul Berne and bassist Timothée Robert. The group came across as one of those so-called World music ensembles whose music was rock-pop in everything but all-English lyrics.
Zarkan herself seemed to operate from a political-poetic point of view, with Arabic lyrics that appeared dedicated to love songs. Oddly enough her final simplistic polemic calling for Middle Eastern peace neglected to include a call for a free Syria, since ironically, rebel groups overthrew the entrenched Bashar al-Assad dictatorship two days later.
Now well-established and with a history of presenting some fine music over the years, Festa do Jazz 2024 offered a wide-ranging, albeit fairly conservative view of the contemporary Jazz scene. One hopes that the festival takes a few more risks in its future programming.
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