Jazz em Agosto: What’s Really Happening in Progressive Music

By Peter Margasak I Aug. 26, 2025

This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
(Photo: Petra Cvelbar)

The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over the 10-day program there are no introductions or explanations prior to the concerts. The lineup is broad but unapologetic about its emphasis on cutting-edge music. Sometimes the sounds go well beyond the standard definition of what jazz is, but there’s no question that the curators understand the improvisation roots of everything they present, offering listeners a rather succinct overview of what’s really happening in progressive music.

The 41st edition of the festival, which ran Aug. 1–10 at the magnificent Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, embraced the same loose formula that’s marked the programming in recent years: a couple of Portuguese acts in the middle of the festival and a few genre-busting acts sprinkled amidst some of the most acclaimed and important international acts in jazz today. Half of the events were sold out, but all of the performances were well-attended by respectful, curious listeners. The festival proves that artistic quality doesn’t need to be compromised by commercial concerns.

The opening weekend was marked by an array of prominent U.S. artists, with three wildly different trios, whether it was William Parker, Cooper-Moore and Hamid Drake embracing unusual instrumentation for its extended improvisations — the bassist eschewed his primary axe in favor of the Moroccan guimbri, the Malian doson n’goni and various flutes, while Cooper-Moore dazzled with his array of self-made devices — or pianist Kris Davis’ elegant, elastic trio with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake. This writer caught an early performance by the Davis trio last summer, and witnessing the group almost a year later made clear how the ensemble has developed. When they played music from its strong debut album Run The Gauntlet at Jazzfest Saalfelden in 2024, they seemed to be figuring the material and one another out. A year later they were fully in sync, the previous reticence replaced by a searing confidence and a palpable playfulness. Apart from the pianist’s typically adroit, well-designed experiments with preparations and internal mucking about, the trio is rooted in tradition, but that didn’t stop Hurst and Blake from tinkering with the groove, stretching and reshaping it like putty. In particular, the drummer’s physical efficiency, spreading sounds across his kit without a wasted gesture, belied the effectiveness of his subtle interrogations, including the use of a second snare drum that dramatically expanded his palette. While I can’t say the octave effect Hurst used on a couple of solos fit in with the trio’s lean, purely acoustic attack, the group’s cohesion and assurance rendered such a quibble irrelevant.

The Sunday evening performance by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious, with several extended solos that seemed to surprise and delight the reedist himself. He provided tons of space for his steely collaborators — bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver (who currently resides in Graz, Austria) — laying out and letting the rhythm section tear it up. Lightcap excelled in working over lengthy cyclical patters while Cleaver reinforced his unparalleled snare drum fury, packing incredible power within tightly-coiled grooves. The trio’s superb 2024 debut recording Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) provided the blueprint for the set, but the performance made it plain that the group has evolved dramatically since it was cut. The trio played a set that made plain how locked in they’ve become as a unit.

On the closing night of the festival vibraphonist Patricia Brennan led her quicksilver septet in its European debut, bringing increased heat and complexity to the repertoire featured on the band’s acclaimed 2024 debut Breaking Stretch. The horn section of trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and saxophonists Jon Irabagon and Mark Shim toggled between punchy, compact charts and wiry extended blowing, while drummer Dan Weiss, percussionist Keisel Jimenez and bassist Kim Cass constructed rugged edifices of rhythm. The surfeit of craggy surfaces and deep nooks provided the soloists with endless options, and Brennan put on a clinic, delivering a series of extended improvisations that only reinforced her standing as one of the most exciting and innovative vibraphonists at work today. But regardless of how complex and feverish the music was, the leaded transmitted clear joy and pleasure at every turn, thrilled by the circumstances and the exuberant crowd.

As usual, the festival took some major risks. While most of the headline concerts occurred on the space’s lush amphitheater, where the music had to grapple with the croaking frogs living on the grounds and the road of overheard jets on their path to Lisbon’s airport, the fiercely experimental English group X-Ray Hextet delivered a stunning set that took full advantage of the striking features of the venue’s Grand Auditorium. The group played in darkness, its silhouetted figures starkly aligned against the lush verdancy visible through the massive wall of windows behind them. The group shaped swells of largely improvised sound — sometimes harrowing, sometimes romantic, but always elusive — while scholar and spoken-word master Edward George confronted histories of oppression through meticulously curated observation and historical fact, a tapestry of ideas that implicated the ongoing cruelty in Gaza despite regular announcements that “this has nothing to do with Gaza.” The eerie blend of jagged piano by Pat Thomas, twinned, off-kilter percussive rumbles by Paul Abbott and Crystabel Riley, the alien celeste patters of Billy Steiger and piercing alto saxophone squawks and acid licks by Seymour Wright were more about mood and structure than expression alternately framed George’s oratory and responded to it. It was unlike anything this listener had ever heard before.

Portuguese guitarist Rafael Toral also channeled new terrain, presenting the music from his stunning 2024 album Spectral Evolution as an immersive trip. He took advantage of the multi-channel sound system in the Gulbenkian’s small Auditorium 2 to transform the avian-stoked sounds into a psychedelic surround-sound experience, thrusting listeners into both an imaginary jungle and into a Disney-grade amusement in which the novelty of the cyclical of the set was more than equaled by its melodic sophistication, technical invention and flawless arrangements. DB