Jazz cannot be crystallized into an immovable and normative musical formula. It was based on this idea that we structured Guimarães Jazz throughout time, and this year, which we now more than ever may qualify as transitional, the festival again presents a line-up where collective uniformities are rejected and a simple principle of diversity of artistic expressions is embraced. From this 2021 edition we must highlight above all the qualitative and mediatic balance between the musical projects in question. The absence of what we usually refer to as “headliners” is, however, counter-balanced by an extremely cohesive group of musical proposals which include some fundamental names of global contemporary jazz, such as pianist Vijay Iyer, composer and arranger Jim McNeely, guitarist Marc Ducret, bassist Chris Lightcap or drummer Gerry Hemingway, among many others.

The new trio led by pianist of Indian descent Vijay Iyer, accompanied by two excellent musicians from the New York jazz scene (Malayan bassist Linda May Han Oh and North-American drummer Tyshawn Sorey) will be responsible for the inauguration of Guimarães Jazz 2021. In a year when the predominant note, contrary to what has been the tendency in previous editions of the festival, is the prevalence of musicians with their origins outside the United States of America, the North-American contingent will be represented by Chris Lightcap’s idiosyncratic project SuperBigmouth (alongside a group of distinguished musicians such as Tony Malaby or Chris Cheek) and by the Black Art Jazz Collective, an ensemble formed by renowned instrumentalists, among them saxophonist Wayne Escoffery and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. The section of “high-profile” concerts is completed with the quartet led by Puerto Rican saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a musician who is a long-time accomplice of Guimarães Jazz, and two of the festival’s collaborative projects: the traditional concert performed by ESMAE’s big band directed by composer and arranger Ryan Cohan, and the collaboration between the Orchestra of Guimarães and the Niels Klein Trio, led by a talented saxophonist of Germany’s new generation of jazz musicians.

In 2021, Guimarães Jazz reinforces a dimension of the festival which has been growing in recent years, related to a closer attention devoted to less known international projects that we believe yo add up a more acute sense of musical risk and emotional intensity which are sometimes difficult to achieve in the concerts that take place at the grand auditorium. This year, this dimension will be fulfilled by the Swiss-American avant-jazz group WHO, featuring outstanding drummer Gerry Hemingway, and the duo formed be Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser in collaboration with French guitarist Marc Ducret, considered by jazz critics as one of the most influent musicians of European jazz of the last three decades.

The festival, which will again renew its partnerships with the association Porta-Jazz (with a quintet led by Portuguese performer Inês Malheiro, in collaboration with visual artist Carolina Fangueiro) and the collective Sonoscopia (proposing a duo of non-conventional improvisation formed by Henrique Fernandes and Joana Sá), will close, as usual, with a big band. This year it will be the reputed Frankfurt Radio Big Band, directed by musical director and arranger Jim McNeely and with Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana as soloist, that will have the responsibility to end the first thirty-year cycle of Guimarães Jazz, celebrated with the eclecticism and the stylistic, generational and geographical diversity that are, or at least so we believe, the present and the future of jazz.

Ivo Martins