Miguel Zenón among the highlights at Funchal Jazz Festival

When you close your eyes, you feel like you've travelled back a few decades. At least. Because Emanuel Inácio's quartet takes you back to the days of good old jazz standards with its programme. And the young bassist from Madeira and his equally young band members from mainland Portugal know how to swing and indulge. With João Ribeiro, actually the quartet's drummer, the band also has an excellent singer on board. Before the gig, you might have wondered why four young musicians have dedicated themselves to such "old" jazz, but after the gig you are more surprised at how well and with how much esprit and ease the young lads know how to interpret this music.

Local and national musicians will kick off this year's Funchal Jazz Festival with free open-air concerts every evening in the small, cosy city garden in the heart of the capital of the Atlantic island of Madeira. In addition, the final examination concerts of the students at the conservatoire will also take place there as part of the festival. So these evenings in the city garden are always a fine warm-up with discovery potential for this year's four main evenings in Funchal's large Santa Catarina Park. The discovery aspect definitely applies to the Francisco Andrade Trio, which has expanded into a quintet on stage. The saxophonist from Madeira, the Portuguese drummer João Lencastre and the Spanish pianist Javier Galiana play an urgent, exciting, fresh jazz composed by Andrade. This can be heard on Andrade's first album on his own new label Timbre Melro Preto, "Linhas e Formas", which was just released at the festival. Album number two from the new record label from Madeira was also presented for the first time at this year's festival. "Gineceu" is the wonderful work of the Madeira Jazz Collective, a sextet of local musicians of calibre. Saxophonist Francisco Andrade is also in charge here, as is his brother, trumpeter Alexandre Andrade. They exclusively play their own compositions or pieces by Madeiran composer Jorge Maggiore, playing gripping, modern mainstream with their own colouring. Eduardo Cardinho can also be credited with this. The vibraphonist from Porto combines the sounds of his vibraphone with sounds from the synthesiser, and he has also cast his sextet with two first-class percussionists and the fantastic alto saxophonist João Mortágua (pictured below). The result in Funchal is rhythmically complex and melodically always interesting and surprising modern jazz.

With so much music related to Madeira or Portugal, it was almost easy to forget that festival director Paulo Barbosa always shows taste in the international artists he invites to Funchal every year. This year, for example, there were two US piano trios. While the Bill Charlap Trio provided fantastic entertainment with a programme drawn from the Great American Songbook with technical finesse and virtuosity while remaining firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, the Vijay Iyer Trio underlined why it is certainly one of the most exciting piano trios in contemporary jazz. The way pianist Iyer, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Jeremy Dutton transformed Cole Porter's world-famous "Night and Day" into a labyrinthine, freely grooving song, always played rhythmically at risk - breathtaking.

Miguel Zenón has long been a true master between jazz and Latin. And the alto saxophonist from Puerto Rico delivers an intense, rhythmic, incredibly variable and exciting concert in Funchal with his long-standing musicial partners Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (double bass) and Henry Cole (drums). For the first time, the festival finished with a concert on a Sunday evening, in cooperation with Melro Preto, the new association of musicians from Madeira under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers. US saxophonist Joshua Redman brought the American singer with Italian roots Gabrielle Cavassa and his concept album "Where Are We" to the Atlantic island. American music from various genres, an exploration of the reality of the USA, songs that thematise cities and states, interpreted emotionally and intensively. The fact that Miguel Zenón came on stage with his alto saxophone for the encore and really fired away together with Redman and his band - this wonderful festival edition could not have ended better than with this real burst of energy.