The 26th edition of the Angrajazz festival has kicked off at the Angra do Heroísmo Cultural and Congress Center. What are the expectations of the Angrajazz Cultural Association for this edition?

Expectations are high, as always. Sales are going very well. We think it will be an edition of the same level, both in terms of quality and audience. And as enjoyable for the audience as it has been in other years.

What are the main highlights of this year’s program?

All the concerts are noteworthy, starting with the Angrajazz Orchestra, which will present a concert featuring instrumental jazz classics. Another concert commemorates the 80th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s presence in the Azores, with a special guest, João Ribeiro. It will be a great concert. Next, we have a great Italian group, which is also a great group on a global level: the Stefano Di Battista Quintet. Stefano Di Battista is a great saxophonist and composer. The performance will be a lot of fun, as it will mainly feature the great hits of Italian music, such as “Volare,” “Con te Partirò,” and “La Dolce Vita.” The concert is actually titled “La Dolce Vita.” Tomorrow, we will have a Portuguese group, as always. This year, we will have the Samuel Lercher Trio, which is a great group with a wonderful album released last year. Next up is the Ekep Nkwelle Quartet. Ekep Nkwelle is a Cameroonian singer who was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Howard University, and then moved to New York to study at Juilliard. She is a young singer who hasn’t even recorded an album, yet she has been highly praised by critics, and Wynton Marsalis immediately invited her to perform at Lincoln Center in New York. She is a great young singer,

and we hope she will have a great career in jazz. We finish on Saturday with the David Murray Quartet. David Murray is a jazz legend with a brilliant career and 200 albums to his name. He has the interesting habit, shared by some great jazz musicians, of joining forces with young musicians who are now on the rise. It’s a very interesting jazz school that has produced some great jazz successes. It’s going to be a great concert. We ended on a high note with Artemis. It’s a group with five wonderful musicians. It’s a quintet that was voted the best jazz group of last year by the North American Jazz Journalists Association and also by the readers of Downbeat magazine as the best jazz group of 2023 and 2024.

The organization has sought to present eclectic lineups, with different genres of jazz and musicians from Europe and the United States. Will this formula continue this year?

We have done this from the beginning. In the third year, we expanded to six concerts and decided that a local group, our orchestra, should be included. It was born out of Angrajazz and is the apple of our eye. Then we always have to have a Portuguese group. It makes no sense to hold a jazz festival in Portugal without a great Portuguese group. Jazz in Portugal is developing strongly; it has enormous vitality and fantastic musicians, so we have to support them. Then, a European group, to demonstrate that jazz is also created in Europe, took the stage, and finally, three American groups followed. We think this is the right formula and very comprehensive. We aim to showcase the various nuances of jazz, featuring the classic jazz trio: piano, double bass, and drums, accompanied by a singer. We vary the instruments to showcase the great music that is jazz.

The Angrajazz Orchestra will mark the 80th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s visit to Lajes Air Base. Was this an important milestone that helps explain the island’s taste for jazz?
Frank Sinatra, but not only him. In the 1940s and 1950s, a large number of American musicians passed through here. The base needed weekly entertainment, so it encouraged and supported the groups that began to form here. So many great musicians have passed through here that they have built up a taste for jazz on the island. By the 1960s and 1970s, this tradition had been lost, but in the 1980s, the Angra do Heroísmo City Council revived the presence of Portuguese jazz musicians. This taste was revived. This island has this remarkable feature.

In Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director.

We thank the Luso-American Education Foundation for its support.