# Egberto Gismonti – Brazilian culture is the basic fountain or source that drives my music: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/12/04/egberto-gismonti-brazilian-culture-is-the-basic-fountain-or-source-that-drives-my-music-video/
- Published: 2018-12-04T21:08:26+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**05.12. – Happy Birthday !!! A virtuoso on both guitar and piano, Egberto Gismonti
has created a body of work that stand at the crossroads of his native Brazil’s folk
tradition and the world of classical music, in a way which echoes his predecessor
Heitor Villa-Lobos. **

He is also a masterful improviser. Gismonti has been described as approaching the
fretboard as though it were a keyboard, often creating the impression of more than
one player. His blazing technique is capable of summoning up an almost orchestral
palette of colours.

Gismonti was born into a musical family in Carmo (Rio de Janeiro state) in 1947.
After first studying the piano, he took up the guitar in his teens. He went on to
study composition, orchestration and analysis in Paris under Webern’s pupil, Jean
Barraqué, and the legendary Nadia Boulanger. On his last day as Boulanger’s student,
she told him to “be a little irresponsible in [his] music, just trust and break 
the rules”. A critical stage in his development was his encounter with the indigenous
peoples of the Amazon rain forest and their music: his researches, and human encounters,
changed his view of the expressive possibilities of musical language and continue
to fertilise his work to this day.

The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar praised his landmark ECM debut, Dança das 
Cabeças (1977) – a collaboration with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos – for its “
raw intensity of textures and styles [which] reveals an indigenous Brazilian musical
world quite different, and more varied, than what one might infer from popular samba
and bossa renditions”. In addition to his work with Vasconcelos, other key collaborations
on ECM have included the trio work with Jan Garbarek (saxophone) and Charlie Haden(
bass), which has yielded three albums, Magico, Folk Songs and Magico: Carta de Amor.

The subtitle to Gismonti’s Sertoes Veredas (from his 2009 release, Saudaçöes) might
almost stand as a motto for his whole oeuvre: “tribute to miscegenation”. This piece
gives some indication of the musical languages Gismonti has made his own, referring
as it does to Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, Bach, the dance rituals of the Xingu Indians
and more.

![Картинки по запросу Egberto Gismonti](https://i0.wp.com/www.unicamp.
br/unicamp/sites/default/files/banco_imagens/2018/04/02/20180321_6-7_egberto-gismonti-
marisa-rezende-CPFL_scarpa_AJS4264.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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