I Went to Porto and It Was Great
For several years now, there has been an annual musician exchange between AMR in Geneva and Porta-Jazz in Porto. In early December 2025, two Portuguese musicians (Hugo Ferreira, guitars – Eduardo Dias, drums) came to meet two Swiss musicians (Tom Brunt, guitar – Samuel Jakubec, drums) in Geneva, then, the following week, two Geneva musicians (Andreas Fulgosi, guitar – and myself on piano) went to meet two musicians from the Porto association (João Próspero, double bass – Gonçalo Ribeiro, drums).
The structure is always the same: two days of residency followed by a concert, in two sets, on the last day. We were playing on Saturday the 13th, and I had chosen to arrive two days earlier to have time to walk around this city I didn't know, and I was right to do so.
Porto and Geneva are roughly the same size, 230 and 200 thousand inhabitants, with urban areas of 1.2 and 1 million. I stayed at the Miradouro hotel, on the top floors of a tall building from the seventies, itself perched in the middle of rua de Alegria, with a dizzying view over the entire city, all the way to the hills in the east and to the ocean in the west. I walked through old cobblestone streets, I saw old churches, stone walls, ups and downs – it's not a practical city for cycling. I saw metro stations, modern ones, dating from 2002, more buildings, stairs and large bridges. I saw lots of moss, it's everywhere, it's very humid and everything is covered in moss, the sidewalks, the houses, the cars.
I took a metro to Matosinhos, and arrived at a long, wide sandy beach, facing the ocean. From there I walked south, in the sun, for several hours, to reach the Douro estuary. I drank a small espresso halfway, surrounded by the roar of large waves crashing on the rocks, and I felt immensely good.
Then came the residency. I met up with Andreas the night before, we had a few drinks while telling each other about our lives, in the back of a bar where only a few pool players remained, and the next day we met João and Gonçalo. Everyone had brought a piece, or a sketch of something, and starting from there, in two days we put together a 45-minute set with written parts and collective improvisations, which we played twice on Saturday.
After the concert I talked, in French, with João Pedro Brandão, the coordenador geral. We talked about our two cities and our two associations, about music, about Vincent Courtois who had just passed through (with Samuel Blaser and Bruno Chevillon), about cassettes, about trumpet, and about the fires that ravage the country's forests in summer.
Porta-Jazz is an association that manages a venue, with a 70-seat concert hall, two rehearsal rooms, one or two concerts and a jam session per week, several one-off events, and an international festival in early February. On this occasion too there is a group proposed by AMR, and the reciprocal happens in Geneva during the AMR Jazz Festival, at the end of March. There's also a label that releases CDs with 45 RPM-format covers and a nice design. All this under the banner of jazz and improvised music. The musicians who join can use all the equipment, free of charge, in exchange for a few services per year – bar, reception, ticketing, etc. There are about fifty of them, and all of this is admirable and very inspiring.
Thank you again to everyone for making this exchange possible, I enjoyed it and it touched me, and I want to go back!
– Johann Bourquenez
Living in Geneva for almost 20 years now, Johann was the communications and production manager of AMR during the 2024/2025 season. He recently gave 4 improvisation concerts during a residency at La Cave with Massimo Pinca (double bass) and Raimundo Santander (guitars), whose recordings will be released, on cassette and on the web, in early February 2026.
Websites:
www.portajazz.com
www.amr-geneve.ch
