Interpretations ranged from the fractional to the focused. In a quartet setting with Soares, floating reed tones at points added a Cool Jazz-like patina, while harsher tempo-shifting split tones contributed to the narratives. In turn, the guitarist’s responses depended on the context, taking on Jim Hall-like lyrical strums or swift flanges and twangs.

Similarly, the others projected a bass and drum groove, sometime extended with Curcio’s below-the-bridge string scratches, and Albertsen’s idiophone pops and mixing-board buzzes. Coelho’s seemingly jerry-built wooden box timbres didn’t so much add exoticism, but intensified the group’s bouncy rhythmic thrust. It also led the guitarist to create an ostinato underneath the others’ solos.

Also stretching the rhythmic breath, Dionísio and Kühne were anything but background singers. Although occasional cadenced harmonies came to the fore, their vocalizing mostly consisted of mumbles, gasps and word fragments. Intonation supplemented the instrumental output, and each extended dynamics with hand motions and sways.

Considering that Cavaleiro never missed an opportunity to emphasize various parts of his kit to expand the interaction, Kühne and Brandão also were constantly alert for twists and turns in the performance.

With the percussionist as likely to scratch a violin bow against a cymbal, gently swish a brush on Mylar tops, sound a tiny bell or emphasize a bass-drum boom, instant decisions were needed.

Brandão expressed light flute puffs at one point and strident alto saxophone slurs elsewhere. Reed timbres were often expanded or fragmented with foot-pedal oscillations, while transverse tones were harmonized with Kühne’s voice.

An unexpected duet when Kühne brought out her wood flute to match his metal one, also created an unexpected state of suspended animation. Yet suspended was the last adjective that could be applied to the vocalist.

Throughout the set she intensified her hand motions into full dramatic gestures. Kühne also intensified her articulation as she expelled a collection of sound fragments, nonsense syllables, whoops, whispers, hiccups and near soundless breaths. At one point her vocal trill was nearly indistinguishable from the flute’s.

Kühne’s non-traditional vocalizing was part of a Porta Jazz leitmotif, with another unique demonstration occurring that same evening with local vocalist Vera Morais’ Eupnea chamber ensemble.

Distinctively, the set-up was as Jazz-combo unrelated as could be. Morais, Latvian Līva Dumpe and Italian Sarah van Eijk vocalized, with associated textures supplied by the flutes and piccolos of Portuguese Teresa Costa and Latvian Ketija Ringa-Karahona. While the vocal harmonies were expected, the use of English lyrics was not, although emphasis on the tessitura range was more prominent and impressive than the words themselves. Verbalized expressions such as “freedom is walking in each other’s shoes” and “unlike my ancestors I don’t want to conquer you” may be apt during 2026’s political climate, but what the vocalists’ lyrical beauty projected didn’t really need words.

Especially notable during the second selection was when all five breathed in sequence, passing parts back and forth with repetition and a variety of air-expelling.

At the same time, the bel canto lilts propelled by the three singers were perfectly complemented by the transverse trills. Besides blending soprano voice trills with reciprocating flute and piccolo puffs, there were times when those instruments’ bites and peeps added a harder edge to the words and melodies. This ensured that the harmony wasn’t pushed too far towards ecclesiastical chorale sounds, at the same time as carefully stacked vocal arrangements helped the singers avoid simple pop music tropes.

Ringa-Karahona’s flute and alto flute were also part of an all-woodwind configuration the next afternoon when she performed as part of the Diagonal Shift quartet. Another chamber-directed ensemble based in Amsterdam, the other members are Portuguese-Bulgarian tenor saxophonist Hristo Goleminov, Italian bass clarinetist Federico Calcagno and American clarinetist Michael Moore.

This unusual configuration didn’t mean the expositions were particularly avant-garde however. Careful harmonies and layered narratives kept the pieces linear, with most tunes wafting up and down.

Usually the bass clarinetist preserved the continuum as a contrapuntal balance to the high pitches usually expressed by the other horns. Most tunes were designed to recap the head as well. Calcagno sometimes contributed expressive reed shakes, Ringa-Karahona frail flutters, and Goleminov the occasional elevated pitch, although lyricism too was his usual starting point, even when the quartet played a pseudo-march.

Overall, it was Moore’s improvising that was most innovative as he replicated baby wails and pounded his palms on the upturned mouthpiece for percussive whumps. Midway through he even removed his mouthpiece from the clarinet body to blow across the naked body top.

If the Littorina Saxophone Quartet skirted atonality, then Cuban Hery Paz, who played tenor saxophone, flute and claves with his quartet during the penultimate performance on the festival’s final night, outlined a 21^st century version of undiluted Free Jazz.

Backed by Portuguese percussionist Pedro Melo Alves, Argentinean bassist Demian Cabaud, and local João Carlos Pinto on keyboards and percussion, Paz’s updating included Latinesque suggestions and electronic pulses, with the band’s performance surmounted with abstract visuals created by Maria Mónica projected on a screen above their heads. These separated, coalesced, wavered and were usually created in tandem with the music.

At the same time Alves often emphasized an assemblage of percussive tones and refractions with his idiophones including hand, brush-and stick pops, and screeches from moving a bow against a cymbal.

Cabaud, however, was not to be overwhelmed. At crucial times the bassist abandoned whatever time-keeping he was involved in to create new sonic colors by vibrating a small wooden stick among his strings, propelling arco slashes with his bow, or producing alternate parallel tones by rasping one bow horizontally and the other vertically across the strings.

Underlying electronic pulses were infrequently obvious and the only overt Latin inflection occurred when Paz rhythmically smacked the claves or singularly intoned in Spanish. Otherwise his reed soloing was characterized by overblowing wide honks, split tone reflux, high-pitched slurs,  and when he turned to flute, energized transverse trills with extended peeps and sighs.

Playing midway through the second day of Porta-Jazz, and moving away from reed extensions, but concerned with showcasing exploratory motifs as well, was an accidental international trio. It consisted of well-integrated sounds from Austrian percussionist Alfred Vogel, Swiss bassist Christian Weber and Scottish pianist Greg Forbes. 

The trio was accidental because the guitarist and keyboardist who ordinarily make up the scheduled SATT group were trapped in the Berlin airport by adverse weather conditions. Forbes, who had worked with the others in the past, was hastily recruited to fill out the group.

Forbes’ appearance was actually subversive though, for rather than performing as a conventional piano trio the three aimed for more adventurous sonics. 

It was a similar tale at an early evening show on February 8 led by a local guitarist who is known only by the initials AP.  Although there was no quarreling with the scope of the compositions’ sounds or the skill of the musicians playing them, something seemed to be missing.

The all-Portuguese combo featuring tenor and soprano saxophonist Gil Silva, pianist Miguel Meirinhos, drummer Gonçalo Ribeiro and João Pedro Brandão, this time on flute, moved between microtones and melody, with the pieces often dissolved into intersection not inspiration.

Some depended on broken-octave evolution as guitar twangs and piano patterning backed tenor saxophone harmonies completed by hammering guitar licks; others matched guitar finger-picking and speedy flute chirps. Eventually each member’s output appeared to dissolve into simple comping before finally connecting for a decisive crescendo.

Other sets involving other bands throughout the festival’s three days included presentations that brought out more emphasis on mainstream, Latin-and rock-affiliated sounds. Still, the first evening’s final set probably best summed up what Festival Porta Jazz  represents and where it aims musically.