L.U.M.E. | Ao Sul do Mundo

L.U.M.E. [Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble]

L.U.M.E. (Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble), created and led by Marco Barroso, is a 15 piece ensemble of jazz and classical musicians, that moves in between affinities with the Big Band classical model and re-interpretations or provocations towards it.
Within a dramatization, frequently ironic, of the practices and vocabularies of jazz, rock or classical music, and incursions into experimentalism, Marco Barroso and L.U.M.E. music transform the Big Bands patrimony, breaking free of its conventional patterns and opening new aesthetic perspectives - a sort of kaleidoscope of broad horizons, in a permanent “what if?”.

Born in 2006, L.U.M.E. released its first homonymous album in October 2010, through JACC Records, and its second edition in September 2013, by the Dutch label “Challenge” (Buzz Catalogue).

“Xabregas 10” (2016), the second album, was released by Clean Feed and considered worldwide as one of the most original and defying music in the last years, by a band of this sort.

L.U.M.E.’s 3rd originals album, Las Californias (by Clean Feed, with the support of GDA Foundation), to be officially released in October 2021 in Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, reveals the creative bubbling of the ensemble in a permanent tension between composition and improvisation.

Foreseeing the album's release, L.U.M.E. reveals, on June 14th 2021, its first single, also called Las Californias, with a video clip by Joana Linda.

L.U.M.E. presents live in 2021 its new album, Las Californias, in the following tour:

02.10 / C.C.B. - Lisboa (PT)

14.10 / Vilnius Jazz Festival - Vilnius (LT)

16.10 / Seixal Jazz - Seixal (PT)

19.10 / Outono em Jazz, Casa da Música - Porto (PT)

22.10 / Skopje Jazz Festival - Skopje (MK)

29.10 / Festival Jazz Ao Centro - Coimbra (PT)

14.11 / EFG London Jazz Festival - London (UK)

PRESS

"...there was an appealing air of gainful urgency as the group carreered through densely textured, sumptuous soundscapes - some tending towards cacophony - interspersed by lyrical balladic slots, funk and groove.”
Barry Davis in Jerusalem Post

“Perhaps the most impressive band was the Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble (L.U.M.E), a 15-piece ensemble led by pianist and composer Marco Barroso who played a late night gig in the back room of the Livraria Ler Devagar (…). The acoustic of the room was difficult for the ensemble’s upbeat music, but nonetheless it came over with a wonderful spirit.”
Tony Dudley-Evans in TDE Promotions

"The frenzied dynamics emerged from a rock solid base of sound giving leeway to heavy crisscrossing as the musical equivalent of a massed free fun run in a park. LUME was able to burst into and jump between different modes rapidly, fluently and colourful, for example giddily switching between brightly shining horn riffs and mighty sound avalanches. Pianist/composer Marco Barroso has developed LUME into a uniquely functioning sound organism discernible also at Barroso’s minimal way of conducting.”

Henning Bolte in London Jazz News

“The music that Barroso creates for the Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble (LUME) is speculative in the sense that, instead of being assertive, it raises questions and possibilities. If post-modernism has become a dogma, LUME’s post-post-modernism is a permanent "what if?", keeping all options open.“
Rui Eduardo Paes in challenge Records

REVIEWS HIGHLIGHTS

“The top 5 acts in moers festival 2016”

Henning Bolte, in London Jazz News

Xabregas 10, album review: 4****1/2

by Derek Stone in Free Jazz Blog

Xabregas 10, album review: 4****

by Glenn Astarita, in All About Jazz

Xabregas 10, album review: 4th best album of 2016

for Tim Niland, proposed to 11th Annual Francis Davis/4th Annual NPR Jazz Critics Poll Ballot, in jazz and blues

Xabregas 10, album review: 10 best albums of 2016

for Angelo Leonardi in All About Jazz

Best group 2016

by Tim Niland (NPR & others)

Best group 2016

for Umit Baykara at Cazkolik, turkish radio

CONCERTS HIGHLIGHTS

Imaxinasons, em Vigo, Espanha (2011)
Festival CCBeat, CCB, Lisboa (2011)
Seixal Jazz (2011)
Festa do Avante (2011)
FMM - Festival de Músicas do Mundo de Sines (2011)
Jazz no Parque, da Fundação Serralves, Porto (2012)
Festival Prémio Jovens Músicos RTP2, no CCB, em Lisboa (2013)
Festival Jazz em Agosto da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (2014)
Festival Outono em Jazz da Casa da Música, Porto (2014)
Ha’Fest em Gent, Bélgica (2016)
Music Meeting em Nijmegen, Holanda (2016)
moers festival, na Alemanha (2016)
Festa do Jazz no Teatro São Luiz (2016)
Concerto de abertura da 25.ª edição do Festival Jazz de Guimarães (2016)
Festival Lisboa na Rua (2017)
Festival ao Largo (T. N. São Carlos, 2018)
59th Ljubljana International Jazz Festival, na Eslovénia (2018)
European Jazz Conference, em Lisboa (2018)
Festival Antena 2 (T. N. D. Maria II, 2019)
jazzahead! em Bremen, Alemanha (2019)