Facing an extremely volatile scenario, the festival perceives the present context as an opportunity to discover new perspectives in jazz capable of fulfilling the desires and expectations of both the musicians and the audience. Therefore, the line-up is mainly focused on projects involving Portuguese or foreign musicians residing in Portugal (the only exception will be the Radiohead Jazz Symphony, a group of six Dutch musicians directed by Reinout Douma, who will perform accompanied by the Orchestra of Guimarães), a format which allows a broader view of the Portuguese music scene, while at the same time promoting new collaborations between musicians and suggesting different artistic approaches. The impossibility of doing the traditional workshops and jam sessions also forced the festival to adapt to the new times but, after pondering the advantages and disadvantages of this temporary configuration, we concluded that Guimarães Jazz’s most important line of force is its ability to deal with the challenges of time, inventing new solutions capable of enlarging the audience’s horizons and that this would be the best way to honour the heritage of resistance and fight for freedom inscribed in the genetic memory of jazz.

They are three musicians of different generations, geographies and styles, but share an intimate relationship with Portugal. Opening the festival, saxophonist Andy Sheppard, a musician and composer with a long and distinguished career in European jazz, will present his quartet “Costa Oeste”, an unlikely group formed by bassist and composer Hugo Carvalhais, prestigious guitarist Mário Delgado and Mário Costa, a prominent drummer of Portuguese’s jazz new generation. On the second day, Guimarães Jazz will receive for the first time in its stage Peter Evans, a trumpeter of remarkable technical skills and with a musical work of wide spectrum, as proven by his double-concert at Guimarães: first in duo with post-free jazz drummer Gabriel Ferrandini and, secondly, with an exquisite formation of trumpet/accordeon/bass alongside with two competent musicians: João Barradas and Demian Cabaud.

Lastly, Julian Argüelles, a long time accomplice of Guimarães Jazz, where he performed many times, will premier his new septet, an ensemble of very good Portuguese musicians interpreting the British saxophonist’s most recent compositions. Besides these three projects, which form the collaborative axis of this year’s edition, Guimarães Jazz will also present two important names of the leading generation of Portuguese music who have been pursuing their paths in almost diametrically opposed fields of jazz. César Cardoso is a composer and an arranger with a fertile and diversified career in orchestral jazz and will present the project “Dice of Tenors”, dedicated to iconic standards either composed or interpreted by some of the greatest tenor saxophonists in the history of this music. Pedro Melo Alves, whose concert will close the festival, is a drummer and composer associated to jazz’s tangent territories, incorporating elements of rock and experimentalism in his music, and will perform with his Omniae Large Ensemble, originally a septet extended, following the festival’s suggestion, to a big band of twenty-three musicians of an unusual orchestration including a section of voices and electronic percussion directed by reputed percussionist Pedro Carneiro.

The line-up of the festival’s 2020 edition will be completed by the partnerships between Guimarães Jazz and other institutions and collectives

operating in music. The increasingly competent Orchestra of Guimarães will perform under the direction of Reinout Douma, the arranger and founder of Nordpool Orchestra, interpreting the music of the influential pop-rock band Radiohead. The association Porta-Jazz proposes a quartet of piano-Portuguese guitar clarinet-drums led by pianist Hugo Raro, and Sonoscopia will premier a collaborative project of digital electronics, percussion-video between the duo @c (Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela), drummer Gustavo Costa and designer Rodrigo Carvalho.

Despite the limitations imposed by its circumstances, Guimarães Jazz remains true to its identity, based on the principles of eclecticism and stylistic and generational amplitude, so, in 2020 the festival will present to its audience a group of musicians of undisputable quality who were chosen by their own merits. Through them, we promote simultaneously the respect for jazz’s tradition and the attention to its future, therefore perceiving Guimarães Jazz as in intermediary bridge between different worldviews in a world devastated by alarming narrative restraints.

Ivo Martins