It is not often possible to attend a concert by Egberto Gismonti. The concert in Comacchio – Saturday, August 25 (21.30) – the multifaceted Brazilian multi-instrumentalist is a unique opportunity to listen to one of the greatest alive musicians.
Egberto Gismonti was born in Brazil and invented the music. Before Gismonti, there were already popular rhythms, dances, frenetic guitars and European winds. But after Gismonti, those sounds finally have a name: that name is Egberto Gismonti. Born as a classical musician, from a Lebanese father and an Italian mother, he soon joined the love for the piano with that for the guitar. His life could be defined as a long apprenticeship before the great discovery, the only one that had value, that Brazilian soul that incessantly Gismonti searched for between classical and jazz, from Maurice Ravel to Viennese waltzes, between the popular rhythms of the Creoles and Indians. This Brazilian soul, “The Brazilian Soul”, which will be evoked by Gismonti with piano and guitar, Saturday night at the evocative Trepponti in Comacchio, for the Emilia Romagna Festival programme.
Inspired by the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Egberto Gismonti had three lives. The first life was a life of study and research in Brazil. The second life took place in Paris, where Gismonti became conductor and disciple of Jean Barraqué and Nadia Boulanger. From there he set off to conquer Europe: he was also a guest at the Sanremo Festival, recorded his first LPs, held tourneés in France and Germany. The third life is the life of consecration, with the return to Brazil in 1971. He recorded the legendary “Dança das Cabeças” with the percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, he learned to play the flute from the Indians, became a world-famous artist. Since then the name of Egberto Gismonti knew an unstoppable ascent, arriving to settle right in the Olympus of the greatest authors of the ‘900.
Info programme HERE