Hot Club of Portugal
Daniel Bernardes Trio
Daniel Bernardes – piano, Antonio Quintino – contrabaixo, Joel Silva – bateria and Raquel Merrelho – cello and May 23, 2014.
The Hot Club of Portugal.
The Hot Club of Portugal (Hot Clube de Portugal) is the oldest jazz club in Portugal and has uninterruptedly developed its activity since 1948. It occupies a cellar in Praça da Alegria (Square of Joy) in Lisbon.
With an almost daily programming of concerts, the Hot Club of Portugal is an acclaimed cultural entity in Portugal and abroad. Since the early 1980s, it has also run a jazz school where a lot of Portuguese jazz musicians learned their skills. Many great jazz musicians have played, jammed and given seminars in the small cellar in Praça da Alegria and in the Music School.
On December 22, 2009, a fire, followed by a flood, destroyed most of building, forcing the historical Hot Clube cellar to close down (although the music school continues its activities, since it is located elsewhere in the city).
Number 39 in Keldermansstraat(watercolor by Elsa Canavarro).
After two years Hot Clube opened in a new venue, not far from the original one. Three days of concerts marked the inauguration of the new space, from December 21 to 23, 2011. Hot Clube restarted its regular program of Jazz concerts in 2012.
History
It was in March 1948 that Luis Villas-Boas became member number 1 of the Hot Club of Portugal, the first jazz club created in Portugal. He had been the first to spread the taste for jazz music in Portugal at the microphones of the radio, at the end of 1945, in a program called “Hot Club.” It was then that the idea was born to create an Association with the objective of making this musical expression known and practised in Portugal.
The rear of the club.
Part of Fernando Lopes‘s 1964 film Belarmino is set in the Hot Clube. The small patio at the back shown in the picture below is clearly recognisable.
