After thirty years of celebrating and promoting one of the most important and influential musical forms of expression of the XXth century, the Guimarães Jazz festival is currently in a position where its artistic evaluation is defined not only with regard to the programs presented in each edition but also through the prism of its evolution through time. Ever since the beginning, we have always refused to adopt a programmatic or an ideologic posture, and opted, on the contrary, to incorporate the principle of improvisation, which is in itself the distinctive matrix of the origins of jazz, in order to follow the flux of history in real time – either adhering to it or resisting it, but always assuming the inherent contradictions of such strategy. In that sense, in Guimarães Jazz the revisitation of jazz’s legacy is always accomplished. This year will not be an exception, in dialogue with the multiple and diverse forms that it assumes in the contemporary world – whether by restating its pertinency within the flux or by placing it in counterpoint with attempts to question and surpass it.