From September 25 to October 4, “Jazz na Rua” carries improvisation beyond the concert hall and into cafés, shops, a library, a bookstore, a school and other spaces across Angra do Heroísmo—an urban prelude to the 27th Angrajazz Festival and a reminder that jazz has always belonged as much to the street as to the stage.

Jazz was never born to remain behind a curtain. Long before it entered the great concert halls of the world, it lived close to ordinary life—in neighborhoods, clubs, bars, dance halls and streets, wherever musicians could gather and a listening public could form around them. Improvisation was its grammar and encounter its geography. From New Orleans outward, jazz crossed cities, borders and oceans until it became one of the twentieth century’s great international languages. In late September, Angra do Heroísmo will return something of that wandering spirit to the music when “Jazz na Rua” transforms the historic city into an extended stage.

Running from September 25 through October 4, the initiative precedes and accompanies the 27th Angrajazz Festival, whose principal concerts take place October 2, 3 and 4 at the Centro Cultural e de Congressos de Angra do Heroísmo. But Jazz na Rua deliberately removes some of the distance between musician and audience. Instead of waiting for listeners to enter the concert hall, jazz goes looking for them. It appears at Verde Maçã Café, Hotel Caracol, Café Aliança in Praça Velha, Quinta dos Açores at the Marina, Pastelaria Central, the Public Library and Regional Archive, Casa do Sal, Livraria Lar Doce Livro and a shop on Rua Direita. Music becomes part of the everyday circulation of the city.

The journey begins September 25 with the Bruno Sebastien Quarteto at Verde Maçã Café, followed by João Santos at Hotel Caracol on September 26. Jazz O’Phonia performs at Café Aliança on September 27 and at Quinta dos Açores on September 28. Bruno Sebastien Quarteto returns September 29 at Pastelaria Central. On September 30, the Public Library and Regional Archive becomes both classroom and stage: Luís da Silva Ribeiro participates in an outreach activity with students from Escola Secundária Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade, followed later that day by a performance with Jazz O’Phonia. October 1 brings the informality of a late-night jam session at Casa do Sal with the Pedro Neves Trio and additional musicians; João Santos performs at Livraria Lar Doce Livro on October 2; and Bruno Sebastien Quarteto reaches Rua Direita on October 3.

Especially significant is the attention given to younger musicians and listeners. On October 2, the Pedro Neves Trio takes jazz into Escola EBS e Ensino Artístico Tomás de Borba for an educational session with students of the Regional Conservatory of Angra do Heroísmo. On October 4, the trio leads a musicians’ training session at the Centro Cultural e de Congressos. These encounters reveal another dimension of a festival’s purpose. A musical tradition survives not simply because audiences applaud established performers, but because someone young hears an unfamiliar harmony, watches improvisation happening in real time and begins to imagine becoming part of the conversation.

At the center of the celebration remains Angrajazz itself. The 27th edition brings together Azorean, Portuguese and international musicians, including the Angrajazz Orchestra in a program marking 100 years since the birth of Miles Davis, Leila Olivesi Octet with “African Rhapsody,” Pedro Neves Quarteto, Tyreek McDole Quartet, Aaron Parks & Walter Smith III Duo, and the SFJAZZ Collective. The festival thus moves naturally between generations and geographies: from one of the defining figures of modern jazz to contemporary musicians continuing to reshape its language.

There is something particularly appropriate about jazz sounding through Angra. This is a city shaped by arrivals and departures, by ships, military presences, emigrants and travelers, by centuries of Atlantic exchange. Terceira itself has long stood at a crossroads between Europe and North America, and during the twentieth century the American presence associated with Lajes added another cultural current to an island already accustomed to receiving sounds from beyond the horizon. Jazz belongs naturally within such a geography because it, too, is a music made from crossings—African and European traditions transformed in America and subsequently carried back across the Atlantic in endlessly renewed forms.

And perhaps this is why Jazz na Rua is more than an accessory to a festival. For ten days, music refuses to remain contained within a single building. It wanders through Praça Velha, enters a café, interrupts the ordinary rhythm of a shop, finds books in a library, meets students in a classroom and waits for strangers at a street corner.

In a city more than five centuries old, the stones have heard bells, processions, marching bands, conversations of sailors and the footsteps of generations.

For a few days this autumn, they will hear something else: a saxophone taking a melody somewhere it has never been before—and an old Atlantic city improvising along with it.