Egberto Gismonti

Egberto Gismonti (Carmo, December 5, 1947) is a Brazilian composer, pianist and guitarist whose style encompasses various musical styles ranging from Brazilian popular music to jazz and academic music. Possessing an extraordinary technique and his own style, he is also recognized as a distinguished and innovative pianist and guitarist.

Biography

Beginnings

Egberto Gismonti in 2017

Gismonti in 1988

Egberto Amín Gismonti was born on December 5, 1947 in Carmo, a city near Rio de Janeiro, although at a very young age his family would move to Nova Friburgo, also close to Rio, where he lived his childhood and adolescence. His father was an aristocrat of Lebanese origin and his mother a Sicilian immigrant. His family had a musical tradition since his grandfather and his uncle were leaders of musical groups. He began his formal study of music at the age of five, studying piano and theory, and then clarinet, flute, and finally guitar, fueled by his father's family's musical tradition. At the same time he became interested in popular music, thanks to his mother who asked him to play Italian serenades on the guitar. At the age of eight he began to study with teachers Jacques Klein and Aurélio Silveira who would be his teachers for the next fifteen years. In addition to his academic music studies, Gismonti was always interested in other ways of conceiving music. He grew up listening to music as diverse as that of Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix. To him, Hendrix's achievements on the guitar were proof that the idiom of popular music and the scholarly one need not be at opposite poles.

Professionalism

As a teenager, he attended the Nova Friburgo Conservatory, earning himself, at the age of twenty, a scholarship to study at the Vienna Conservatory. However, he rejected the scholarship, since he was interested in furthering the study of popular music. In 1968, his composition "O Sonho", a piece for orchestra, was presented at the third International Song Festival (FIC), promoted by TV Record, by the group Os Três Morais. This work, with its extraordinary orchestration, aroused great enthusiasm and was recorded by eighteen different international artists. That same year, he traveled to Paris, where he studied with the legendary composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger, with whom he learned orchestration and analysis, and with the composer Jean Barraqué, a student of Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen, with whom he studied twelve-tone music. His encounter with these two great icons helped him find his own musical language, mixing the European avant-garde with Brazilian music, both popular and scholarly. At the end of his course, Nadia Boulanger recommended that he return to Brazil and investigate his music because, in Europe, almost everything had already been done and in Brazil there was much to discover.

His first LP, Egberto Gismonti, was released in 1969, through Elenco. There, he sang his own songs, making a partnership with Bossa Nova composer Paulo Sérgio Valle. Also in 1969, he appeared at the San Remo Festival in Italy. In 1970, he toured Europe, recording two singles in France, one LP in Italy, one in Brazil (Sonho 70), and one LP in Germany (Orfeu Novo). His song & # 34; Mercador de Serpentes & # 34; it appeared at the fifth International Song Festival in 1970. Returning to Brazil in 1971, he settled in Teresópolis, another small city near Rio. He played in various places in Brazil and his music was included in the soundtracks of the films Un Penúltima Donzela (Fernando Amaral, 1969), by Confissões Frei Abóbora (Brás Chediak, 1971), and in Em Família (Paulo Porto, 1971).

In 1972, he recorded Agua e Vinho (in collaboration with the poet Geraldo Carneiro) and in 1973, Egberto Gismonti and Adademia de Danças, all three discs through EMI/Odeon. The latter emphasizing purely instrumental music. After the recording, the producer said that it didn't make sense at all, he received a note from EMI/Odeon saying that due to the economic difficulties in Brazil, it would be the last album of Gismonti's career, as it is an album out of any category, with 25-minute tracks, expensive, as it required modern synthesizers and a large orchestra. However, the album was awarded the Golden Record in Brazil.

In 1974, he accepted an invitation to play at a festival in Berlin, Germany, and asked Hermeto Pascoal and Naná Vasconcelos to join him at his presentation. Returning to Brazil, he received a letter from ECM in 1975, inviting him to record with them. Not knowing what the future importance of this invitation would be, he postponed answering until the end of 1976, before accepting it, imagining that he could record with the Brazilian group he was playing with at the time: drummer and percussionist Robertinho Silva, bassist Luis Alves, and the saxophonist and flutist Nivaldo Ornelas. However, the Brazilian military dictatorship imposed excessively high prices to leave the country, so he finally traveled to record alone. In this way, Gismonti traveled to Norway to begin what would be the explosion of his international career.

International career

Once in Norway he met with Naná Vasconcelos to whom he explained the concept of the album. It was the story of two boys wandering through a dense and humid tropical forest, full of insects and animals, keeping a distance of 180 meters from each other. She knew that Vasconcelos would accept without hesitation, and she did. His first album with ECM titled Dança das cabeças (1976), received various international awards, was nominated for album of the year by Stereo Review and received the Großer Deutscher Schallplattenpreis award, a the time it received contradictory categorizations that reflect the cultural richness of Brazil and its misunderstanding: in England, it was awarded as pop; in the United States, as folklore; and in Germany, as classical music. Either way, the lives of both artists changed: Vasconcelos immediately became a sought-after international artist, touring the world, and Gismonti returned to Brazil, determined to investigate the music of the indigenous people of the Amazon. In the heart of the Amazon jungle, in the upper Xingu, he tried to make contact with the Yawalapiti tribe, playing his flute for two weeks until the main head of the tribe, Sapaim, invited him to his home. They shared the only common language; music. Gismonti had more than a month of living and learning with them, under the condition of propagating the values of the people of the rain forest. For him it was an experience that helped him glimpse a broader musical reality than that of the classical or popular world. Gismonti comments on his experience: "In the Xingu, I had confirmation that I am part of a society of absolute extremes, with extreme technology, immense wealth, immense poverty, having a jungle that it has incredible biodiversity with all the indigenous Brazilians who are guardians of the Amazon."

Sol do meio dia (1977) would be their next album, which saw the duo grow thanks to the incorporation of saxophonist Jan Garbarek, percussionist Collin Walcott and guitarist Ralph Towner. The recording sessions were followed by a tour which included Gismonti, the Belonging Quartet and Oregon. The album meant a deepening of the indigenous elements in his music, as well as a new sound texture built through saxes, percussion, guitars, bells and piano. Gismonti dedicated this album to the Xingu Indians, with whom he had lived in the Amazon jungle.

In his next recording, Solo (1978), he manages to express a pure and comprehensive understanding of his music, his own style, full of finesse and intimacy. The disc sold more than 100,000 only in the United States, something unexpected for not being a massive musical genre. His next album was a trio recording titled Magico (1979), with bassist Charlie Haden and again with saxophonist Jan Garbarek. The album marks a clear development of his style that is closer to jazz fusion, understood as a subtle version of contemporary European jazz, typical of the ECM label. The same year the trio toured Europe including a concert at the Berlin Jazz Festival followed by the second part of the album, entitled Folk Songs (1979), which gave continuity to the style. one of a kind. In 1981 another tour would come throughout Europe after making the double album Sanfona (1980), which is related to the Brazilian roots of his music. He has a group album and a solo album. In the first record, Gismonti joins the Brazilian group Academia de Danças: Mauro Senise (sax and flutes), Zeca Assumpção (bass) and Nené (drums and percussion), to develop the jazz vein of Brazil. On the solo album, his emphasis is more decidedly on his guitar and indigenous music through improvisation on the Brazilian accordion or sanfona. In 1984 a new album would be published together with Vasconcelos titled Duaz Voces, which would be a return to indigenous exploration, but always with their own stamp tending towards contemporary music.

On the albums Dança dos Escravos, Zig zag, Infancia and Música de sovivencia, weave two influences, the music of Western Europe and the music of Brazil. This leads him to take another step in the direction where the distinction between the learned and the popular becomes more and more invisible. His melodic lines have a special and unique way of phrasing and expressiveness. In harmonic terms, Gismonti has found a way to blend two cultures, as one might find in the music of Villa-Lobos, Baden Powell, or João Gilberto. His rhythms are also very fragile and carefully constructed.

Some of his compositions have been covered by the Argentine musician Pedro Aznar or by the singer and jazz player Delia Fischer.

Style and influences

His music has diverse influences: learned music, such as that of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian popular and folk music (such as batucadas, choro, bossa nova, forró, frevo, baião or maracatú) jazz (since the bebop to experimental jazz), indigenous music, and impressionism (such as Maurice Ravel's ideas of orchestration and harmonization).

In order to play this latest music, he began to study the guitar, beginning with the classical 6-string guitar. Then—accustomed to generating complex jazz harmonies on the piano, with full use of the upper and lower registers—he switched to 8-string guitar in 1973 and then to 10-string.

For two years he experimented with different tunings and timbres (using indigenous flutes, kalimbas, sho, voices, bells, etc. He is extremely skilled on both the piano and the guitar. His work, in addition to being abundant (he has recorded more than 60 albums), is versatile and multifaceted on several fronts, with influences from jazz, rock, movie music, bossa nova, samba and erudite, mainly from romanticism and modernism, in addition to presenting elements of Indian, indigenous and northeastern music (from the Brazilian northeast). In the same way, he knows how to combine the flutes of the Xingu Indians, with a string orchestra, synthesized music and a batucada.

He has recorded albums with some of the greatest international artists such as Jan Garbarek, Zeca Assumpção, Nando Carneiro, Charlie Haden, Jaques Morelenbaum, Hermeto Pascoal, Mauro Senise, Ralph Towner, Nené, Naná Vasconcelos, Colin Walcott and even with the Lithuanian Symphony Orchestra.

Discography

Discography as soloist or leader

• Egberto Gismonti (1968)
• Sonho 70 (1969)
• Orfeo Novo (1970)
• Water and Vinho (1972)
• Arvore (1973)
• Danças Academy (1974)
• Coracões Futurists (1976)
• Dança das Cabeças (1976)
• Sol do Meio Dia (1977)
• Carmo (1977)
• No. (1978)
• Just (1978)
• Magic (1979)
• Folk Songs (1979)
• Circle (1980)
• Sanfona (1980)
• Em Familia (1981)
• Fantasy (1982)
• Cidade Coração (1983)
• Bandeira do Brasil (1984)
• Duaz Voces (1984)
• Live at Berlin Jazzbühne Jazz Festival (1984)
• Trem Caipira (1985)
• Alma (1986)
• Dança dos Escravos (1986)
• O Promise Payer (1988)
• Feixe de Lux (1988)
• Children (1990)
• Amazonia (1991)
• Casa das Andorinhas (1992)
• Music of Survival (1993)
• Brazil Musical (1993)
• Zig Zag (1995)
• Meeting (1997)
• In Montreal (2001)
• Anthology (2003)
• Saudações (2009)
• Magic: Love Card (2012, recorded in 1981)