Samara Joy and Kurt Elling fire up Portugal‘s Funchal Jazz Festival

Paulo Barbosa shows good taste in programming his festival every year when the Funchal Jazz Festival takes place in July in the beautiful Santa Catarina Park in the heart of Madeira's capital. But this year, on the very first of the three evenings with international stars (before that, as last year for the first time, there were also some concerts for regional musicians in the small city park with free admission), the busy festival director acted as a door opener by giving the fantastic Portuguese alto saxophonist Ricardo Toscano a leading role as special guest at the concert of the trio of the US pianist Emmet Cohen.

Which worked out pretty well. The Cohen Trio with its jazz rooted in tradition, which the congenial trio knows how to break open in such an exciting way and looking forward or at least into the present, and on the other side the sonorous Portuguese with his soulful, powerful saxophone lines. A slew of jazz standards serves as a common basis for sounding out tonal connections. Magical, one has to state at the end. 

Great voices were heard more often in Madeira. This year it was Kurt Elling and Samara Joy. The one is a swashbuckler with a great stage presence who can and does sing so many things. His current project, which he presented on the island, together with guitarist Charlie Hunter, is called "SuperBlue". A funky, grooving thing, well played and with the guys of the US band Butcher Brown with crisp horns, creative drumming, keyboard and Hunter's hybrid guitar acting between electric bass and electric guitar, it offers the best musical entertainment.

One wishes a little of the courage and curiosity of her male colleague to the young US-American Samara Joy for her further career, which is still in its infancy, despite already having two Grammy Awards in the cupboard. But she and her trio still follow the traditional line of great US jazz singers too closely. What is still missing is something unique, something offbeat, the "aha" effect in her performance. But vocally she brings a lot to the table. And in the end she dares to do something, with a fado sung in Portuguese that sounded good.

What the Spanish saxophonist Perico Sambeat and the Orchestra de Jazz do Funchal had worked out together for a few days was worth listening to. Fresh music, interesting arrangements and a local big band that showed what it can do. While all the bands this year played with very good drummers, the Grammy-decorated drummer Terri Lyne Carrington showed impressively how strong the female voice is in jazz with her "New Standards" programme and compositions exclusively by female musicians. It was a real statement that was also musically completely convincing.

The most special project in Funchal this year, however, was probably "Entre Paredes" by the sextet of Portuguese bassist Bernardo Moreira. Even as a young musician, Moreira was enthusiastic about Carlos Paredes, the musician from Coimbra who died in 2004, who took the Portuguese guitar out of its purely accompanying function in fado, although Paredes composed pieces for fado queen Amália Rodrigues. As a young musician, Moreira even played with Paredes. And in 2021, with the album "Entre Paredes", after a first album in the early 2000s, he has re-established the connection to the music of the great guitarist.

After 20 years, Bernardo Moreira creates between jazz, fado and Portuguese folklore, with brother João Moreira on trumpet, guitarist Mário Delgado, pianist Ricardo J Dias, drummer Joel Silva and young alto saxophonist Tomás Marques soulful, warm-hearted moods in Santa Catarina Park and play an immensely soulful concert full of emotional vibrations. Paredes' famous composition "Verdes Anos" is immensely moving in a version played only by trumpet and piano. A discovery, a project well worth listening to, which will hopefully soon make its way from Portugal out into the world, which so far it hadn´t done.