L.U.M.E. - BIMHUIS, October 10, 2025

L.U.M.E. (Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble) undoubtedly is an exceptional entity. Born in 2006, this 15-piece ensemble from Lisbon is held together and in development through all the years by its leader and composer Marco Barroso.

Marco Barroso

It can be said that L.U.M.E. is Barroso’s instrument and that his compositional style and personality are clearly reflected in the music making of this ensemble. It’s a very characteristic playful style of reshaping and revitalize known figurations from the history of large ensembles in jazz.

That these musicians have an excellent grasp of it and can do surprising things with it, turned out quite quickly. Playing the biannual festival Big Sounds Amsterdam they were just in the right place. After L.U.M.E.’s much-praised appearance at European Jazz Meeting 2018 in Lisbon the ensemble played a series of greater European festivals as London, Skopje, Vilnius, Jazzahead and it’s laudable that Bimhuis’ Frank van Berkel kept this ace on his sleeve for a good occasion.

It started a bit tame in a quite straight conventional Bigband way. Hm, should they in the meantime have adapted more to mainstream? It quickly revealed that it was totally not the case. They are still not sqeamish. The old spraying and jump forces were fully alive and kickin’ instead. The dynamics, layering and foolhardiness quickly increased and fully flourished with an unavoidable dry tongue in cheek load.

Among ensembles you can find the pretentious approach/attitude and the downplay approach/attitude. L.U.M.E. tends in the second direction, which liberates and releases other, roll-over-Beethoven-forces, where sophistication appears in a different guise. Strikingly the ensemble plays almost fully ‘out of itself’ also in quite complex passages, which gives the suggestion that they find/found all crazy shifts, overdrives, undermining, overlays and distortion, clutter and crashes, tumbling, wobbling and crumbling collectively themselves.

     
 (left) Tomás Marques, Gonçalo Prazeres, Joana Sá  -  (right) João Sousa

All morphings, transmutations, transformations never appear as an end in itself but follow its own lush logics. Barroso leads from the piano by playing breaks and transitions. He intervenes very rarely with conducting, mostly when inducing a real-time shift in timing or spontaneous deviation.

Maybe when living and working on the edgy peripheral side of Europe, there is a fruitful soil for this kind of courageous and surprising out-pourings. It’s interesting that Barroso went to the Netherlands years ago to study and catch some of the spirits of Misha Mengelberg and Michiel Braam. He now brought something bright, kicking and inspiring back to the Netherlands.

P.S.: It would be fantastic to see one day a flashy documentary on Lisbon with music by this ensemble.

Text and photo’s © Henning Bolte

     
(left) Sofia Queiroz, João Sousa  -  (right) Rúben da Luz, Jéssica Pina, João Silva

Marco Barroso, Sofia Queiroz

line-up

Marco Barroso composition/direction/piano
Manuel Luís Cochofel flute
Gileno Santana, Jéssica Pina, João Silva trumpet
Paulo Gaspar soprano clarinet
João Pedro Silva soprano sax
Tomás Marques alto sax
Gonçalo Prazeres tenor sax
Joana Sá baritone sax
Rúben da Luz, Eduardo Lála, Mário Vicente trombone
Sofia Queiroz electric bass
João Sousa drums

L.U.M.E.
Big Sounds Amsterdam