Egberto Gismonti SAUDAÇÕES
ECM Egberto Gismonti SAUDAÇÕES Disc One: Camerata Romeu, conducted by Zenaida Romeu. Disc Two: Egberto Gismonti and Alexandre Gismonti: guitars ECM 2082-83 6025 179 7280 (3) Release: May 2009 “Saudações”, Egberto Gismonti explains, means ‘greetings, salutations, saludos, saluti’. The greetings follow a longer absence, at least on record, this double album marking his first appearance on ECM in 14 years. Although he has been active as a touring musician in the interim and continued to produce recordings by other artists for his Brazilian Carmo label (“Saudações” is a co-production of ECM and Carmo), the multi-instrumentalist and composer has devoted increasingly more time to writing new music for larger ensembles. His last ECM recording “Meeting Point” (recorded in 1995) was made with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius. This time Gismonti opts for interpreters and locations nearer to home: disc one, with the seven-part suite “Sertões Veredas” was recorded in Havana with the Camaerata Romeu, and disc two, a programme of guitar duets and solos, was recorded in Rio de Janeiro with Egberto and his son Alexandre. The “Sertões Veredas” suite, as Lilian Dias remarks in the liner notes, “takes a musical journey through Brazil, revealing, in a diffuse way, the different faces of its people, culture and history. It’s a journey through time and space, in a permanent exchange between music, literature and cinema, where nothing is left untouched and everything goes through a deep transformation. However, the translation of this scenery of dreams in the language of music, leads us through a maze of memories and allusions, voices and colors, sounds and images”.
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