Luiz Bonfa – Introspection: Bonfa Solo Guitar (1972)

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Originalmente postado no Loronix em 10 de fevereiro 2007.
Comentários originais incluídos.






Hello, Good Night! I’m leaving tonight for some personal affairs, being back late to meet Loronix friends. Meanwhile, I would like to leave you with a great record that came as a contribution, the first out of several ones from the Loronix friend tcisalpino. I would like to say something about the new features implemented, the guide to Amazon in print records and the musicians @ Loronix mini-store. They are of a great importance to keep Loronix up and running, not by the commercial aspects with the revenue generation to Loronix, but with a better positioning of our community within several different players that surrounds us, something that we use to call in business language as the value chain. Loronix should generate benefits to everybody involved and these minor features were launched towards this value proposition.

This is Luiz Bonfa – Introspection: Bonfa Solo Guitar (1972), for RCA (USA), featuring Luiz Bonfa and his acoustic nylon guitar and considered by the critics as one of the best solo guitar albums ever made. Thanks once again tcisalpino for this great contribution to Loronixers. My writing does not have the quality needed to describe this music, so I will let you with a review from Thom Jurek/AMG.

Tracks include:

For all of his prodigious output (literally dozens of albums) and his widely celebrated artistry as a guitarist, bandleader, interpreter of popular songs from many traditions, and composer (of two of the breakthrough bossa film soundtrack Black Orpheus’ most seminal cuts, no less), no Luiz Bonfá recording reaches the dizzying — if gently stated — heights of his acumen in the way Introspection does. Recorded in 1972, this album features eight of Bonfá’s own compositions played on solo guitar, whether the nylon-string he established his reputation on, the electric six-string, or a specially designed 12-string. The deep emotion in each track, dovetailed with his lushly articulated phrasings in spare passages of warm, languid, sometimes somber, and always deeply romantic poetic imagery, is heart-searing. From the elegance of his classical enunciations on “Enchanted Mirror,” where each line is mirrored with chromatic counterpoint, to the shifting scalar morphing in “Reflections,” to the gloriously complex yet seamless and edgeless harmonic interplay of “Rain,” to the shimmering Charlie Byrd and Django Reinhardt quotations in “Leque,” Bonfá’s guitar artistry is total. But more than this, these compositions sing; they carry the fire and intervallic dimensionality of sonatas and the human ambiguities of song. Introspection may be the one title — if you can only have one — in Bonfá’s catalog to own. It not only stands as his best work but, along with Bola Sete’s Shambhala Moon, may be the best guitar recording in the history of Latin music.

Track List:

01 – Enchanted Mirror (Luis Bonfá)
02 – Summertime Love (Luis Bonfá)
03 – Reflections (Luis Bonfá)
04 – Concerto For Guitar (Luis Bonfá)
05 – Rain (Luis Bonfá)
06 – Leque (Luis Bonfá)
07 – Missal (Luis Bonfá)
08 – Adventure In Space (Luis Bonfá)

Thanks tcisalpino for Luiz Bonfa – Introspection: Bonfa Solo Guitar (1972).2 Comentários originais

Anonymous said…
João -SP
“Luiz Bonfá -Introspection “tem o dom de acrescentar à nossa vida uma camada mais profunda de sensibilidade musical.
Monday, 15 October, 2007

Good Groove said…
I find “Introspection” a bit overrated, quite frankly. Technically, I naturally agree it ranks among Bonfa’s best. We can find truly great inspirational moments throughout the record (track 5 ‘Rain’ being one of my favorites), but my opinion is that it’s just not as innovative as one might expect after bumping into praises about everywhere (just read reissue producer Arnaldo de Souteiro’s liner notes on http://www.koorax.com/jsr/prod/bonfaint.htm and the AMG review posted by Zeca). People aware of e.g. Carlos Paredes’ (1925-2004) work with the Portuguese guitar will recognize him as the main inspiration for Bonfa’s “Instrospection”. Some evidence? Drop by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwhV1ivYNsQ orhttp://bravojuju.blogspot.com/2007/08/carlos-paredes-movimento-perptuo-1971.html
Monday, 15 October, 2007

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