Guimarães Jazz celebrates its 35th edition in November with a poster filled with premieres, including the performance of Kurt Elling with the National Jazz Orchestra of North Macedonia.
© Lusa
15/10/2026
by
Lusa
O Guimarães Jazz will perform its 35th edition in November with a poster composed of festival premieres, with the “honorable exception” of American singer Kurt Elling, accompanied by the National Jazz Orchestra of North Macedonia.
According to the information available at the festival’s ‘site’, which has its heart at the Vila Flor Cultural Center (CCVF), among the outstanding premieres at the event are trumpet player Peter Evans, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and the “supergroup” ARTEMIS, “composed of five instruments of excellence – Ingrid Jensen, Nicole Glover, Noriko Ueda, Allison Miller and Renee Rosnes”.
The festival – which on Friday launches a book to mark the more than three decades of work – begins on November 12th with the quartet of Brazilian Toninho Horta with the Guimarães Orchestra, on a day when there are ‘jam sessions’ with the quintento of Lex Korten and the opening of the exhibition “Corpo e Alma – O jazz e seus divulgadores em Portugal”.
Until the closing, on November 21, with Kurt Elling and the National Jazz Orchestra of North Macedonia, there will be concert performances with the trio composed by Dave Rempis, Jason Adasiewicz and Chris Corsano, the quintet of João Tavares and performances resulting from the various partnerships of the festival with projects such as Sonoscopy, Porta-Jazz, the Jazz Orchestra of the Higher School of Music and Arts of the Show, among others.
“ Despite this celebration, the perspective of Guimarães Jazz has always been based on the principle that the most important thing is what is going to happen and not what has already been done, so it is in the present that we should focus”, it can be read on the festival page.
Over the decades, Guimarães Jazz has received several of the world's leading jazz names in that district of Braga.
In statements to Lusa in 2025 about this year’s edition, programmer Ivo Martins stated that the festival “has made more or less a journey through time and tries to gather in the same set of concerts various formulas, various formations, which present as much as possible different jazz, in their various approaches”.
The objective of the program is to create “open spaces, respecting the uniqueness of musicians”, and try to “establish an articulated vision of the reality” of that musical genre.