After a remarkable concert with the Ahmed trio in 2022, pianist Pat Thomas returns to Jazz em Agosto with a special project dedicated to the music of Anthony Braxton. Although Braxton’s work has a recognisable rational and complex personality, Thomas’ arrangements for the quintet The Locals, while maintaining the rigour of Braxton’s writing, give it a playful dimension, many voices on the border between rock and funk. “It’s such a pleasure, you almost forget how audacious [this proposal] is,” he wrote to The Wire about the album released in 2021. The same five members now return to the stage, recovering the intensity and vibrancy of extraordinary music that Braxton would never have dared to dream of.