A native of Michigan, Jacob Sacks is currently considered one of the most creative pianists of the New York jazz scene and a musician with a close relationship with Guimarães Jazz, due to his previous collaborations with the Portuguese recording label TOAP and in the context of the project Zero led by saxophonist João Guimarães. A former student of the Manhattan School of Music, Sacks was, throughout the twenty-five years of his career, a member of several formations and ensembles, ranging from Paul Motian’s septet and David Binney’s octet to the Mingus Big Band, and collaborated with some of the most relevant names of contemporary jazz such as, among others, Tim Berne, Ralph Alessi or Chris Potter. In parallel to his work as sideman, Jacob Sacks pursues a relevant activity as composer for piano solo and is the leader of various ensembles.

Canadian saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Chet Doxas began his musical trajectory as a member of a swing ensemble from Montreal. Ever since he moved to New York, in 2014, Doxas released eight albums under his own name and participated in more than a hundred recordings for other musicians., having collaborated with a significative number of important names of jazz and pop-rock, namely Carla Bley, Dave Douglas and Rufus Wainright, just to name a few. Among Doxas’ personal projects we may highlight the band Rich in Symbols, whose repertoire is inspired by visual artists, and the trio he maintains alongside pianist Jacob Sacks and double-bassist Thomas Morgan.

Vinnie Sperrazza is a drummer from New York whose entryway to the jazz circuit was, in opposition to the trajectory followed most musicians, marked by his first album as leader, “Apocryphal”, released in 2014 after a period devoted more to the study and teaching of music than to the artistic creation. Since then, Sperazza begun a collaboration with pianist and composer Ethan Iverson in the context of the dance group directed by choreographer Mark Morris, and develops an intense work with different formations, namely Hank Roberts’ septet, the ensemble Choir Invisible and Michael Formanek’s Drome Trio, among other projects. Besides his strictly musical activity, Sperazza also writes regularly about jazz history and theory.

A reputed instrumentalist of the contemporary jazz scene, double-bassist and composer from Canada Zack Lober is the co-founder of the critically acclaimed group The Story (present at the 2010 edition of Guimarães Jazz) and the leader of the “Ancestry Project”, a multidisciplinary project of performance, music and video. Besides his authorial work, Lober also collaborates as sideman with many seminal figures of jazz music, among whom we may highlight the names of Henry Threadgill, David Binney and Butch Morris, as well as of several artists identified with the universes of pop and rock music, such as Billy Idol or Ian Astbury, the frontman of the band The Cult.

Suzan Veneman is a young Dutch trumpeter, composer and arranger academically trained in the United States and with an ascendent trajectory in the international jazz circuits, both European and North-American. A versatile instrumentalist, Veneman collaborates with various ensembles, including the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the Millenium Jazz Orchestra, Zack Lober’s project NOFILL3R and the Patrick Bonnet Quintet, and is at the same time the leader of a sextet under her own name, which in 2022 released her debut album, entitled “Migrations of the Mind”.