This partnership, which began in 2012, continues to propose a residency and collaboration between ESMAE's students and the composer invited to direct them, a role that, in 2017, will be assumed by the composer Geof Bradfield. Besides being one of the most highlighted musicians of Chicago’s current jazz scene, he is also a reputed professor at the University of Illinois. Therefore, Guimarães Jazz will provide again to a group of young musicians a highly demanding creative and professional experience, by putting them in contact with a both conceptually and stylistically versatile and eclectic composer who creates a music based on a fundamental principle of permanent assimilation of knowledge and ideas.