In its previous edition, Guimarães Jazz celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and re-affirmed the importance of questioning its own history, based on the idea according to which to think History is, in a sense, one of the strategies to make History. In 2017, however, we are celebrating the one-hundred years of the first studio recording identified with a musical genre practically unknown at the time, and yet to be fitted into a musical category – jazz. Even though the recording itself is irrelevant in strictly musical terms, the Original Dixieland Jass Band’s recording was, in symbolic terms, the foundation of an autonomous musical style. From that moment on, the history of jazz would change dramatically, since the documentation of the music held important consequences in the development of an inherently volatile genre, which was always, since its beginning, based on improvisation and real-time performance.

To celebrate such ephemeris means to question and problematize the notion of heritage on a narrative and musical level, therefore proposing an alternative organization of historical events. This concept constitutes the matrix from which all the connections between the different projects presented in this year’s edition of Guimarães Jazz and justifies the generational and stylistic transversality of its line-up. Operating within a context characterized by the multidisciplinarity, politemporality and polysemy of the musical phenomena, the festival suggests a panoramic view of the past in order to achieve a cultural transformation. That implies looking attentively to the distinct temporal strata of which contemporaneity is made and to identify in it the signs of the still unknown future jazz. Mapping memory means radiographing the present.

Eclectic, open and transversal, Guimarães Jazz aims to establish itself as the diffusor pole of a wide meditation about the future of jazz and, in a broader sense, of every other musical and artistic practices of the twenty-first century. However, neither this narrative intention, nor the concept behind it, distract the festival from its fundamental mission of promotion of jazz, presenting musical projects which, beyond the pertinence of the artistic proposal itself, allow us to put the festival’s audience in contact with high-quality musicians, even if they are not band-leaders.

Guimarães Jazz’s opening concert of this year’s edition features extraordinary guitarist Nels Cline, presenting his highly-praised album “Lovers”, accompanied by the Orchestra of Guimarães. The centennial of the first jazz recording are explicitly evocated at the festival’s second concert, presenting the project “Jazz - The Story”, by the All Star Orchestra, a remarkable ensemble featuring, among others, saxophonists Vincent Herring and James Carter and bassist Kenny Davis. This concert will be followed by two of the festival’s highlights, demonstrative of Guimarães Jazz’s generational and stylistic amplitude: first, the legendary avant-garde and free jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille, interpreting the album “The Declaration of Musical Independence” (which was considered one of 2016 best jazz records), and the group Mostly Other People Do the Killing, one of the most innovative and challenging jazz projects of the new millennium, and which will perform in Portugal for the first time in septet. The second week includes the return to the festival of the great saxophonist Jan Garbarek (in a concert featuring virtuoso Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu), by the performance of Boom Tic Boom band led by North-American drummer Allison Miller (alongside highly-regarded musicians such as Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg and Kirk Knuffke, among others) and, finally, by Darcy James Argue’s project “Real Enemies”, performed by the big band Secret Society, an idiosyncratic and defying musical and artistic proposition of strong political content about the world of digital paranoia and vigilance in which we live today.

The festival’s programme will also include, besides the great concerts, two other performances at the CCVF Small Auditorium – the group VEIN, featuring renowned saxophonist Rick Margitza, and the quartet led by Jeff Lederer and Joe Fiedler, featuring vocalist Mary LaRose, a group that will also be responsible for conducting the jam sessions and workshops, was well as for the directing ESMAE’s string ensemble and big band. Lastly, the partnership project between Guimarães Jazz and the association Porta-Jazz will meet a new chapter, this time focusing on the intersection of music and theatre by a group of musicians formed by Nuno Trocado, Tom Ward, Sérgio Tavares and Acácio Salero, collaborating with writer Jorge Louraço Figueira and actress Catarina Lacerda.
Ivo Martins