Egberto Gismonti: piano, guitar
An indisputably foremost figure in the music and culture of the past 50 years, universally regarded as one of the most versatile, innovative, and influential artists of our time, Egberto returns to FolkClub five years after his last concert on our stage, for an unmissable solo concert that will add prestige and honor to our XXXVI season and the entire history of the club.
The son of a Sicilian pianist and a Lebanese doctor, Gismonti showed exceptional musical talent from a young age and began playing the piano at the age of six, developing extraordinary technical skill and a profound understanding of music theory, dedicating himself to the study of classical music for 15 years. He moved to Rio de Janeiro and then to Paris to study orchestration and analysis with Nadia Boulanger, one of the most influential composition teachers of the 20th century, and composition with Jean Barraqué, a leading post-Webernian composer, student of Schoenberg and Webern, with whom he explored the frontiers of contemporary music, gaining essential experience for the formation of his musical language, an amalgamation of tradition and experimentation. Upon returning to Brazil, he spent an extended period with the Xingù indigenous people, from whom he learned to play their flute. Following this experience, Gismonti perceived a much broader reality of the musical world beyond that represented solely by classical music. He was drawn to the compositional ideas of Ravel, Varèse, and the composers of the Vienna School, but also to the cavaquinho [a stringed instrument in Brazilian popular music somewhat similar to the guitar. Ed.]. Gismonti was also influenced by jazz, choro, bossa nova, rock, and the Brazilian classical music of composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. In the 1970s, he dedicated himself to the study of the guitar, starting with the classic six-string instrument and moving in 1973 to an eight-string guitar, and later to a ten-string guitar. He spent two years experimenting with different tunings of the instrument and exploring new sounds, using flutes, kalimba, sho, voice, bells, and the bandolim (a type of Brazilian mandolin). During the first half of the 1970s, he laid the foundations for his musical conception, listening to and drawing inspiration from musicians as diverse as Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix, thus supporting the notion of the absence of contradiction between popular and classical music. His unique and distinctive creative vein did not go unnoticed by the contemporary-focused German label ECM, for which he began recording in 1977: the beginning of a new career that led him to become one of the foremost musicians of our time. The legendary debut album "Dança das Cabeças" - in duo with percussionist Nanà Vasconcelos - was followed by a long series of highly varied productions. ECM, to which the musician is still linked today, reissued the early Gismonti catalog and also distributed his subsequent Brazilian productions released on the Carmo label. Among his collaborations, in addition to the already mentioned Vasconcelos, are those with Pedro Aznar, Charlie Haden, Jan Garbarek, and Hermeto Pascoal. The over 80 albums published in his more than fifty-year career testify to an unparalleled, monumental, and inexhaustible production, which extends to music for ballet, film, TV series, and documentaries, theater, art and sculpture exhibitions, and philharmonic orchestras, not to mention the vast array of projects realized as a 'mere' producer or arranger. Egberto Gismonti's music knows no boundaries. Each of his musical productions represents a unique chapter in his ceaseless artistic quest. His compositions are a journey through the soundscapes of Brazil, from the Amazon to modern metropolises, weaving stories of places and people with rare emotional depth.
This is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to listen live to one of the greatest musical geniuses of our time. It will be a journey that will lead us through a mosaic of sounds, where each note is a piece that composes a fascinating and ever-evolving sonic picture. His improvisational skill and technical mastery promise to deliver an unforgettable musical experience of extraordinary intensity.
