Dave Holland (b. 1946, United Kingdom) is an eclectic musician and composer with an impressive career of almost five decades, during which he experimented almost every musical languages and because of which he is nowadays considered one of jazz’s great masters. A collaborator of some of the most important musicians of the twentieth century, such as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz or Anthony Braxton, the relevancy of Holland’s work in the history of music is the natural consequence of the originality and the expressiveness of his music, both as instrumentalist as well as composer, qualities which that allowed him to build an impressive career during which he followed in real time, and even anticipated, the evolution of music during the last fifty years.

A native of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, Dave Holland began his professional activity while he was still a teenager and, at fifteen, he was already playing as sideman of North-Americans musicians on tour through England, having performed alongside with some of the great names of the fifties and sixties of the past century, such as the legendary singer Roy Orbison. After moving to London, the bassist’s ambition to experiment new musical paths led him to develop a relation of great complicity with the British free jazz scene, collaborating with musicians such as John Surman and Evan Parker, among others. However, the most decisive event of Holland’s career takes place when Miles Davis invites him to join his new group, the quintet that would record one of the most innovative and avant-garde albums of the twentieth century: the influential and revolutionary Bitches Brew. From that moment on, Holland started to focus on his own artistic work, both in collaboration with many great musicians of contemporary jazz, such as Chick Corea, John Abercrombie, Steve Coleman or Joe Lovano, among many other, as well as in compositional projects for big bands or ensembles, therefore inscribing his authorial landmark in the history of western music.

At the age of seventy-two, Dave Holland remains active and creative, and Aziza is his most recent project. The band recorded, in 2016, an album described by the critics as an effort to discover new musical territories through the synergy between the musicians involved, all of them gifted and inventive musicians of contemporary jazz who have performed in past editions of Guimarães Jaz in other projects. Therefore, this concert, in which Lionel Loueke will be replaced by Kevin Eubanks, an equally excellent guitarist, will certainly offer the audience a defying yet rigorous and free yet self-conscious music echoing a sense of spiritual discovery.