# Review: Egberto Gismonti’s astonishing energy and vibrancy on guitar and piano at our Europe Jazz Blues Festival 2025: Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2025/08/16/review-egberto-gismontis-astonishing-energy-and-vibrancy-on-guitar-and-piano-at-our-europe-jazz-blues-festival-2025-photos/
- Published: 2025-08-16T12:32:29+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**EU welcomed Brazilian guitar and piano legend Egberto Gismonti at our Europe Jazz
Blues Festival 2025.**

Egberto Gismonti drew encores from the crowd at the ornate Riga, Latvia. Gismonti
opened his program on guitar with a set of three pieces performed classical-style
on an acoustic nylon 10-string guitar. Gismonte assumes duties at the concert grand,
demonstrating that his instrumental capabilities reach far beyond the guitar.

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.

His first piece, Alegrinho & Saudações, coaxed a multiplicity of rising and falling
calypso rhythms and sonic textures from the bass strings. His third piece, Águas
Luminosas & Bianca, proved to be fleet-fingered and melodic in complexity, arpeggiated
and in a minor key set against resonant bass strings…

![No programa desta semana, o compositor, produtor e multi-instrumentista  Egberto
Gismonti.](https://i0.wp.com/cultura.uol.com.br/upload/radio/opianopopularbrasileiro/
20220705133338_ppbr-0807-publi-1-.png?w=640&ssl=1)

After a brief guitar-tuning interlude against the Steinway piano onstage, Gismonti
repositioned the nonslip cloth onto his left leg and played his second guitar piece,
Mestiço Coboclo & Dança, which evoked a traditional Spanish sound and groove which
had Gismonti bobbing along.

It’s rhythms burst into jovial fretboard tapping along the bass strings and simultaneous,
galloping pluck of right hand treble strings. It’s truly lovely, vibrant stuff, 
particularly with Gismonti’s dynamic, propulsive improvisations around guitar-led
pieces like “Salvador”, “Maracatu” and “Em Familiar”. These dancing Gismonti tunes
are carefully counterbalanced by Haden’s stately, reflective compositions “First
Song” and “Silence”, and this is so clearly identifiable as an ECM sound that it’ll
do little to dissuade the label’s detractors. But that’s their problem. This is 
beautiful music, beautifully played, and surely there’s room for a little of that
in all but the most barren of souls right now.

It’s an extended season that usually begins in end July and stretches until mid-
August. Whatever the finer design points, this is an impressively old university
setting for a gig.

During last year’s festival, veteran Brazilian guitarist and pianist Egberto Gismonti
played in Ludwigshafen as a duo with Portuguese singer Maria João, whos

![Las imágenes del concierto de Egberto Gismonti en el Festival de la Guitarra](
https://i0.wp.com/s1.abcstatics.com/abc/www/multimedia/espana/2024/07/13/egberto-
gismonti-guitarra%281%29.JPG?resize=640%2C427&ssl=1)

For his return visit, Gismonti played solo, beginning on guitar, then changing seats
for the piano in the second part of a set that ultimately ran to around 90 minutes.

The 77-year-old Gismonti doesn’t make many live appearances nowadays, so it was 
impressive that EU Jazz Blues fest secured his presence for a second year, allowing
him to express himself more personally, in this solo setting.

Although amplified, Gismonti didn’t sound much louder than semi-acoustic as he swapped
between 10- and 12-string guitars, which sat high on his left knee, their broad 
necks angled upwards.

He had explained that everything he was going to play had roots in Brazilian folkloric
tradition, and despite tidying up the trad edges and elaborating the melodies, this
was indeed a recognisable factor.

He went on to mention the crucial importance of miscegenation in the formation of
much Brazilian culture, particularly its music, which is made up of a rich brew 
of antecedents, and he reminded the audience that there are also many folks of German
descent living in the south of the country.

Gismonti played skittering parts on his lower strings, then hopped up to the bass
part of his aircraft carrier-sized guitar neck, stretching his palms to facilitate
low runs – it was almost like watching a sitar player rather than a guitarist.

Gismonti’s fingertips had a percussive attack, tapping out harmonics whilst picking
scintillating solo flurries; sometimes he rapped the guitar body like it was a cajon.

![Egberto Gismonti Opens the Metlife Foundation Music of the Americas 2014  Fall
Concert Series | AS/COA](https://i0.wp.com/www.as-coa.org/sites/default/files/styles/
article_hero_1026x576/public/field/image/Gismonti.JPG?w=640&ssl=1)

After around 50 minutes, Gismonti moved to the piano, never to return to his guitars.
Perhaps this was because alighting on each instrument involves such a different 
process, not only on a finger-muscle level, but on a mental plane as well.

He began this second phase with Tom Jobim’s ‘Insensatez’, setting out on what was
to be a river-flow of intermingling rhythms, phrases and decorations, in a style
that was difficult to fix as jazz, classical, or folk.

Ultimately, it was an individual Gismonti concoction of all of them. He managed 
to insert sharply percussive emphases and atonal outbreaks, but still rafting across
the top of his chosen melodies, which were usually manifested as a kind of suspended
cascade.

The audience demanded two encores, ignoring Gismonti’s sleepyhead gestures, and 
his pointing, eyebrows raised, at his watch. Nevertheless, he still delivered some
extra time, goaded on by the crowd’s extremely enthusiastic reception.

If there one description could characterize the entire evening’s concert, it would
be of Gismonti’s astonishing energy and vibrancy.

Musically, he is able to evoke an array of new and unfamiliar creatures that traipse
forward, peer with glittering eyes from the underbrush and then vanish just as mysteriously
as they’d emerged.

**By Olivia Peevas**

![SSZ_L_Gismonti.jpg](https://i0.wp.com/www.songlines.co.uk/media/2345/ssz_l_gismonti.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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