Initially linked with the aesthetic trends of free jazz and experimental music, a musical path inaugurated by revolutionary jazz saxophonists such as Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, Garbarek would soon shift to a more personal style, characterized by sound spacialization, by the use of silence as musical element and by the exploration of melodic possibilities within tonality, therefore distancing himself from the matrix of dissonance and deconstruction. The saxophonist’s personal identity allowed him to achieve significant recognition within the jazz scene, and in 1970 he would record his first album in the label ECM, African Pepperbird. Meanwhile, he was invited to join Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet, as well as to collaborate in other projects led by the pianist, namely his seminal solo album, Luminessence. During the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, Garbarek held an intense activity as leader and in the context of several collaborative projects with important jazz musicians such as Eberhard Weber, Terje Rypdal, Bill Frisell and Ralph Towner, while at the same time pursuing artistic partnerships with an eclectic set of influential figures of contemporary music, both inside and outside jazz’s territory, namely Egberto Gismonti, Gary Peacock and Naná Vasconcelos.

Garbarek’s approximation to world music, propelled by his ambition of expanding the horizons of his own music, became more and more intense with time and was materialized through several relationships of artistic complicity with non-occidental musicians, practitioners of a music rooted in their specific cultural and musical backgrounds. Such is the case of the quartet we present in Guimarães Jazz, formed by three of Garbarek’s usual collaborators, namely bassist Yuri Daniel (musician with a well-known connection with Portugal), pianist Rainer Brüninghaus and virtuoso Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. A musician of remarkable technical abilities, Gurtu has collaborated throughout his career with an impressive list of jazz luminaries, such as Don Cherry, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, Pharoah Sanders or John McLaughlin, as well as with musicians of other musical latitudes (rock, pop, electronic music or world music), among whom Youssoun N’Dour, Salif Keita, Cesária Évora, Bill Laswell, Gilbert Gil and many others.

Jan Garbarek’s musical sensibility, focused on a textural and abstract approach to jazz, finds in this quartet a confluence point of multiple musical languages, capable of creating an evocative and expansive music based on an open and borderless dialogue between sounds and cultural idioms.