Porta-Jazz 2024
14th Festival Porta-Jazz
Porto, Portugal
February 1-3, 2024
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Situated some 300 km north of Lisbon, Portugal’s second largest city is perhaps best-known as the originator of high-quality fortified port wine and its major seaport. More recently, Porto has become a centre for Jazz and improvised music.
This was irrevocably proven in early February when the 14th edition of the Porta-Jazz festival took place in the city’s modernist Teatro Rivoli. Located in a expansive downtown square next to Porto’s ornate marble and granite city hall with its 70-meter high clock tower, the facility’s multiple concert spaces proved ideal for the variety of performances hosted by Porta-Jazz.
Musician-managed Associação Porta-Jazz, which also produces weekly concerts and releases CDs on its own label, has expanded its yearly festival to present sets by like-minded players from elsewhere, as well as showcasing local improvisers.
One of the most interesting Porta-based projects took place in a smaller upstairs space in Teatro Rivoli on the festival’s final afternoon. Entitled Matriz_Motriz or Matrix Engine, it featured Mané Fernandes using his guitar and pedals to produced high-flanged riffs and low-pitched string stops that took on folkloric, rock and improv currents in the interpretation of his compositions. Crucial to the performance were the key stops, inner-string strums and odd slapping cascades from João Grilo’s prepared piano and electronics. Infrequently as well, the guitarist added his voice to the three-part harmonies that included distinct syllable or timbre elaborations from featured singers Mariana Dionísio, Vera Morais and Sofia Sá.
If that weren’t enough, dancer Brittanie Brown’s choreography further translated Fernandes’ ideas into striking movements. Sinuously circulating across the floor, rolling, undulating and leaping, Brown’s gesture may have been spectacular, but they didn’t dominate. Throughout, Grilo’s playing. which ranged from simple swing and speedy cascades to hard clips and angular stops. fused unambiguously with the guitarist’s positioned strums or pastoral interludes. As for the singers, their crystal clear enunciation of nonsense syllables or dialect asides was equally compelling, as were their solo turns into tessitura extensions.
Morais demonstrated her vocal skills again during Ensemble Mutante #1, presented on the Teatro Rivoli’s main stage as Porta Jazz’s concluding performance Sunday night. It began as a three-part gibberish dialogue among the vocalist the instruments and the articulations of alto saxophonist/flutist João Pedro Brandão and bass clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Hristo Goleminov in front of the main stage curtain. The backdrop eventually parted to reveal affiliated textures from Inês Lopez’s piano, toy piano and keyboards; Aleksander Sever’s vibraphone, and Marco Luparia’s drums and percussion.
The trio’s speaking-in-tongues soon evolved into polyphonic euphony with that dynamic environment further enhanced by broad wedges of keyboard glissandi and chiming piano clips; violin bow-sawing; sharp mallet slaps on the vibes’ aluminum bars; and drum rumbles or steel-pan-like echoes.
Taking full advantage of this backing, Goleminov alternated between clarion bass clarinet hums and tenor saxophone honks; Brandão projected flute trills as well as yearning reed bites, while Morais’ vocalizing encompassed bel canto lyricism, subterranean growls and careful poetic recitation, each of which was sometime performed a capella. Eventually the broken octave musical steam-roller solidified enough to create a high energy finale.
Alto saxophonist Brandão was also part of an ad hoc, mostly Portuguese ensemble backing German vocalist Almut Kühne that performed in Teatro Rivoli’s basement performance space Saturday afternoon. Kuhne, whose scheduled trio set was cancelled due to one member’s illness, instead improvised alongside the saxophonist, bassist Demian Cabaud, dual drummers Pedro Melo Alves and Marcos Cavalerio, plus the electronics of Nuno Trocado.
Beginning with a striking demonstration of unaccompanied vocal virtuosity, the singer uncorked timbral variations that comprised cartoon-like voices that during the set included Tweety Bird-like
chirps, bel canto lyricism, and what sounded like phrases recorded at 33⅓ played back at 78 rpm. At points she even split her range in two, with one voice screechy and the other lullaby-soft.
Throughout however, her yelps and mumbles were frequently challenged by the saxophonist’s reed bites and interspaced voltage crackles from Trocado. Kühne’s discordant improvising was supplemented with a series of aphorisms she voiced in English, ending the set intoning “Your Life is My Life”.
Porta-based Trocado, playing guitar and electronics, was also a member of one of the international groups at Porta-Jazz just before the Kuhne concert and on another small Teatro Rivoli stage. Trocado improvised alongside local bassist Sérgio Tavares and the UK’s Tom Ward playing alto saxophone, flute and clarinet.
Affiliating with the bassist’s deep string twangs, guitar strokes and electronic throbs, Ward emphasized deep breathing as he advanced a theme that when joined, shifted to minimalism as singular saxophone notes were followed by single guitar strokes and isolated arco bass sweeps.
As the wave-form buzzing intensified, so too did guitar flanges and repeated bass stops, leaving Ward’s flute trills to lighten the program. These flutters were replaced by clarinet puffs and buzzes as electronics became more robust, louder and more percussive. An unexpected walking bass line joined by alto saxophone squeaks finally moved the narrative back to a swing-like base by the conclusion.
Meanwhile Brandão, who was also the 2024 festival’s chief coordinator, was one of three local saxophonists who joined an international multi-generation percussion trio which opened Porta- Jazz this year with a performance on Teatro Rivoli’s main stage. Consisting of veteran American Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Catalan Vasco Trilla and Lisbon-based Pedro Melo Alves, the drummers were later augmented by Brandão and José Soares on alto saxophones, and German tenor saxophonist Julius Gabriel.
Arranged among a music store’s collection of percussion instruments, each drummer in turn was able to cannily emphasized his individuality with Trilla slapping cymbal combinations and stroking a metal
bowl for distinctive sounds; Alves aggressively rubbing and rotating small implements on drum tops; and Moses manipulating a double-headed miniature bolo-bat-like drum, striking a large gong, and a one point leaving aside his drums to trill a miniature wooden flute.
At midpoint, the saxophonists appeared from behind the percussion setup puffing split tones and slurping vamps, as the drum trio slid into an approximation of a rhythmic groove led by Moses’ straightforward ruffs. This didn’t preclude innovation however, as Alves tapped a triangle and whooshed brushes in the air for unique sound currents as Trilla slid a wetted finger across a drum top to create complementary percussive shrieks. The six players reached a distinctive climax with a crescendo of mated dialogue and dissidence.
Similar sonic balancing acts were on show on Saturday during separate concerts by two non-Portuguese bands on two smaller Teatro Rivoli stages. In the afternoon was the trio of Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser, Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas and French guitarist Marc Ducret.
Obstreperous and slippery, Blaser’s brass slides contrasted tellingly with Mockūnas’ movement among various reeds as he created vocalized tenor saxophone smears, slippery clarinet glissandi and snorty bass saxophone shouts. Meanwhile Ducret used foot-pedal pressure and knob-twisting emphasis on his teardrop-shaped guitar to provide contrasts or continuum to the others’ expositions. Jocularly the guitarist’s Rock-star like flourishes sometime seemed as much caricature as the trombonist’s infrequent slides into marching band-like oomph-pah-pahs, but the saxophonist’s steady drones or tongue stops helped direct both into connective portamento swing.
Switching the lead among themselves, a woody clarinet solo was backed by plunger slides in the same way that multi-string twangs and spiky string jabs were adapted into a mid-range melody by a combination of vocalized trombone tones and tough tenor extensions. Tailgate trombone slides, reed vibrations and guitar-string shakes were finally corralled to expose a steadying broken-octave narrative.
Closing Porta-Jazz’s second night main stage performance was an all-American trio, including Cuban-born tenor saxophonist Hery Paz. The others were trumpeter Nate Wooley and drummer Tom Rainey. The music they played was characteristically barrel-chested and vigorous.
Using brass peeps and puffs, Wooley set up a series of bright arpeggios which dynamically contrasted with Paz’s reed doits, bites and smears, as Rainey’s mallet and stick resonations on cymbals and drum tops maintained the horn-created thematic expression. Advancing from Wooley’s subtle Bop quotes to decidedly Free Jazz, the improvisation quickened and became more turbulent.
More discursive during the trio’s second number, each instrument became percussive, with the trumpeter’s buzzy flutters and the saxophonist’s honks enhancing the drummer’s rim shots.
Melody reasserted itself in the final sequence as the notes emanating from the trumpet’s bell placed against a metal sheet led the others in a bright semi-march tempo finale.
Pointed inferences from mainstream to multiphonics were also prominent during the set by AXES on the Teatro Rivoli’s mainstage following the Moses/Alves/Trilla performance.
Directed by Coimbra-based soprano saxophonist João Mortágua, the band included alto saxophonist José Soares doing double duty after his throwdown with the percussion trio; tenor saxophonist Hugo Ciríaco and baritone saxophonist Rui Teixeira, along with electric bassist Filipe Loro and drummer Pedro Vasconcelos.
Divided into sequences and more carefully organized than the preceding reed-percussion blowout, the stacked saxes often projected their harmonized vamps with shattering crescendos. As the bassist and drummer maintained the groove, the reed connections were sophisticated enough to be both foot-tapping and fruitfully inventive.
Although much of the program involved careful sound division between the high-pitched reeds and the lower pitched ones adding to roller-coast-like rides of multiple coloration, space remained for individual impressions. While the baritone saxophonist maintained energized low notes as an ostinato and the soprano saxophonist’s trills functioned as that of section leader, the tenor saxophonist’s expression touched on the Blues, while surprisingly, the alto saxophonist puffed out airy Paul Desmond-like passages. As bouncy reed synthesis suggested both big band and circus music, the saxophonists cunningly passed the final lilting theme from one to another before harmonizing for a final lullaby-like conclusion.
Some musicians involved in Porta-Jazz however, simply added to established forms rather than stretching the jazz improv tradition to the near-breaking point. For instance bassist Nuno Campos, whose quartet occupied the penultimate spot of the festival’s final night at Teatro Rivoli, stuck firmly to contemporary Jazz aided by pianist Miguel Meirninhos, drummer Ricardo Coelho and tenor saxophonist José Pedro Coelho.
With compositions mostly performed with a relaxed feel, many of the harmonies came from the amalgamation of Campos’ string plucks, which ranged from near-the-scroll tickles to solid mid-range stops, and Meirninhos’ melodic expressions that had also been displayed during a pre-festival gig with bassist Pedro Molina’s quartet at Porta-Jazz headquarters. Saxophonist Coelho concentrated on beauty as well as bluster, and the drummer specialized in restrained ruffs.
As another example, guitarist Luís Ribeiro’s afternoon set the same day was musically proficient and atmospherically echoing, but low key. Saxophonists Rui Teixeira and Hugo Ciríaco, who were also part of AXES, touched on the Blues in their motifs; drummer Marcos Cavalerio, who had backed Almut Kühne, was now more felt than heard; while flowery pianist Joaquim Rodrigues’ electronics added atmosphere but little else. Even Miguel Āngelo’s bass work was more sombre than stirring. Bookending most of the tunes with string interludes, Ribeiro’s licks added some lyrical bounce but not enough to make the set rousing.
Overall, each part of the Porta-Jazz program confirmed the health and durability of the local scene. It also further substantiated that the essence of Jazz and improvised music is in-the-moment creation, no matter the results. Now a healthy teenager, the festival is sure to offer many more moments of satisfaction and surprise in the years to come.
More photos from Porta-Jazz are on the individual Artists‘ pages.