In 2009, Jazz em Agosto reaches its first quarter century. In its 26th programme, devoted to Icons and Innovators, the festival presents contemporary jazz musicians who have forged new languages and identities in an ever changing, and ever richer, free music scene over the last twenty five years.

TV Spot (20")

The history of jazz, stretching back almost a hundred years to 1923 and King Oliver, first credited with inventing the language, are replete with figures who have become icons: Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Paul Bley, to name a few, and Cecil Taylor, George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Lacy, Muhal Richard Abrams who have performed at Jazz em Agosto since its founding in 1984. The musicians who forged the language, and therefore became icons, have been succeeded by others, down to the present day. Through the process of repetition characteristic of music, innovative artists have adopted and developed new patterns, over time and generations, moulding and transforming them until they instituted new languages. Contributing to transformation, different social, economic and political situations came into place, in an accelerating process which is now more conducive to fragmentation and fractality.

In its programming choices, Jazz em Agosto has sought to provide a historical perspective as well as a snapshot of the contemporary scene. This year's ten concerts offer a cross-section of jazz today as it explores new ground.

The Icons but also Innovators in the line-up for the 2009 Jazz em Agosto will be George Lewis, presenting his electroacoustic project, Sequel, the Nublu Orchestra, led by the master of style, Butch Morris; Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy, a brass band evoking the trumpet player Lester Bowie, the unexpected super-group Buffalo Collision, with Time Berne, Ethan Iverson, Hank Roberts and Dave King, Peter Evans' pioneering trumpet playing, in two dimensions, solo and quartet, and Rob Mazurek?s Exploding Star Orchestra, with Bill Dixon. The selection of musicians also highlights the importance of the jazz trumpet: Dave Douglas, Bill Dixon, Rob Mazurek and Peter Evans, continuing the line of trumpet playing which goes back to the original creators of the language, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong.

This focus on the American birth-place of jazz, at a time when belief in a new world balance is taking shape, is complemented by two examples of European innovation: the Propagations saxophone quartet (water, earth, fire and air), from France, and the electroacoustic voice and flute duo, Franziska Baumann and Matthias Ziegler, from Switzerland.

The programme is rounded off by experimental DJing, with Rough Americana by DJ Mutamassik and Morgan Craft, a talk by George Lewis on his recent monumental book on the Chicago AACM A Power Stronger Than Itself / The AACM and American Experimental Music, and two documentaries on iconic jazz musicians, Escalator Over the Hill by Steve Gebhardt and Imagine the Sound by Ron Mann, providing an overview of the main trends in jazz in the first decade of the 21st century.