Hot Club of Portugal

The Hot Clube de Portugal is a jazz club in the Praça da Alegria in Lisbon. He is the oldest, still existing jazz club in Europe.

History

Since 1945 a group of jazz friends met to Luís Villas- Boas to listen to records, share news, and even to make music. Villas- Boas began at the time a radio show to make, which he called the Hot Club. After various difficulties in dictatorial Portugal under Salazar Villas -Boas was founded in 1948 with jazz interested friends a jazz club, as a club Hot Clube de Portugal ( HCP), founded in 1932 inspired by the Hot Club de France. After further trouble from the authorities of the Estado Novo regime, the club was finally legalized in 1950, and his statutes laid the dissemination of jazz as a target fixed. The HCP organized in the following festivals and concerts, where musicians such as occurred Sidney Bechet, Count Basie and Bill Coleman. In the early 1950s the club then moved into a basement at the Praça da Alegria Square ( house number 39) in Lisbon. Since then, the Hot Club was one of the most important constants in jazz in the country. In the 1980s, a jazz music school and the HCP Big Band came about, as well as other, later band projects such as the HCP septet.

In 1995, the profit of the association was confirmed and renewed regulatory agency. After a fire in 2009, the club was closed about two years and more, as needed to other premises, before he removed in 2011 in a few steps, a neighboring building and newly opened ( house number 48). After the death of the founder Villas-Boas 1999, the club inherited his collections. In particular, the record collection, but also the extensive photo archive are now the core of the Museum of the HCP.