The guitar wasn’t João Luiz’s first instrument. It was the trumpet he played in the school’s marching band at eight years old.
In fact, the foundations of his training had been laid even before then. In his household, his family listened to so much samba and choro that, between the age of ten and twelve years old, the boy soloed and accompanied a vast repertoire. No longer on the trumpet; not yet on the guitar.
He was taught cavaquinho by his cousin, who, on and off, had the boy performing in the groups he assembled, including feats such as soloing Brasileirinho with the instrument behind his back. In parallel, João Luiz studied music theory and solfeggio at Ordem dos Músicos do Brasil (Brazilian Musicians’ Association), with the legendary teacher Ondina T. Magalhães.
His interest for the more elaborate harmonies of jazz and a certain kind of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) naturally stemmed from those early years, leading him to delve deeper into the instrument he started playing at thirteen: the guitar.
He soon started to dig into Radamés Gnatalli and Villa-Lobos, and learn classical pieces by ear, spinning Segovia non-stop in the record player. The result: at sixteen he enrolled at FAAM, where he studied with Henrique Pinto, his great teacher.
One of João Luiz’s classmates in the classes with Henrique was Douglas Lora, with whom he formed – while still in college – what would become one of the most important duos of the concert music scene after Duo Assad: the Brasil Guitar Duo.
Winner of the VII Souza Lima Contest; highlighted as chamber music group in Koblenz Festival in Germany (where the two musicians took classes with Hubbert Kappel); and recipient of a scholarship to study with Fábio Zanon in the Winter Festival of Campos do Jordão (where they were awarded the MOAD prize), the Brasil Guitar Duo – still known as João Luiz and Douglas Lora then – made its debut on CD with Duo de Violões (2001).
In 2006, they released Bom Partido, an album that showed the amplitude of their arc of musical interests: from Marlos Nobre to Djavan. By the way, the singer-songwriter from Alagoas inspired at least two of João Luiz’s compositions: Fantasia sobre um tema de Djavan, found in the collective album Movimento Violão Ano III (2006), and Djavan’s Portrait, recorded by the Duo in Ghosting (2014).
This openness to the so-called popular music would result in the albums Zanzibar (2011), entirely dedicated to the work of Edu Lobo, and Plays Gismonti (2023)—if Gismonti can be situated in the realm of “popular” music at all.
But prior to that, in 2008 and 2009, the recording of Mario Castenuovo-Tedesco’s complete works for two guitars, released by the famous label Naxos, established the Duo once and for all among its pairs and the specialized press. Later on, the same Naxos would release Leo Brouwer – Music for Two Guitars (2016) and The Book of Signs (2018), recorded with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra.
Throughout the Brasil Guitar Duo years, João Luiz also developed other projects, groups and albums. Regarding these, we would like to highlight his participation in the last lineup of the Violão Câmara Trio, alongside Douglas Lora and their master Henrique Pinto, originating the Concerto a Tre (2003) album; his work, from 2002 to 2009, in the celebrated Quaternaglia Guitar Quartet, with which he recorded the albums Presença (2004) and Estampas (2010); the creation of Trio Virado, with flutist Amy Porter and violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez, dedicated to Latin American contemporary chamber music works (like the previously unpublished works of Sérgio Assad, Frederic Hand and Leo Brouwer recorded in Mangabeira, in 2015); and the recording of Esquina de São Paulo (2021), with mandolinist Danilo Brito.
In 2008, the guitarist moved to New York, where he resumed his studies. After pursuing a Masters degree at Mannes College of Music and a Doctorate on the guitar works of Camargo Guarnieri – partially recorded in his 2021 solo album Central Guitar, by the way –, he became director of chamber music and head of guitar studies at CUNY Hunter College, in NY, and guitar and chamber music teacher at the Yale School of Music.
In acknowledgement of his work as a researcher, promoter and performer of Latin American contemporary music, he received the prestigious Feliks Gross Award in 2023.
João Luiz’s compositional vein has also been dilating: Recife, a harp concerto, premiered in 2019 with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra; MadrigAfro, a concertino for guitar and strings, premiered in 2022, across units of Sesc SP; in 2024, Saravá, for string quartet and guitar, commissioned by TUCCA and the D-Composed Collective of Chicago, received the Best Work Premiere award from the Association of Art Critics of São Paulo (APCA). Saravá had been performed in November of that year at Sala São Paulo, in celebration of the Black Awareness Day.
Let’s go back to 2023. Guitarist Gabriele Leite came to Rocinante to record Territórios. To direct her record debut, she brought along the composer of MadrigAfro, in which she had been the soloist with the São Paulo Chamber Soloists. We promptly invited him to record a new album. And so Os Guardiões da Magia: Leo Brouwer por João Luiz was born – an album on which the universe of the genius Cuban composer is revisited by the Brazilian guitarist.
After taking part in the Brazilian premiere of Brouwer’s Gismontiana; performing in Havana alongside Yo-Yo Ma and Carlos Prieto in celebration of Brouwer’s 75th birthday; and receiving a nomination for the Latin Grammy in 2016 for the aforementioned Music for two guitars – on which the Brasil Guitar Duo performs Brouwer’s complete works for two guitars – João Luiz unveils the more recent phase of the work of one of the most inventive composers for the guitar of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Two of the pieces in the repertoire of Os Guardiões da Magia were personally dedicated by Leo Brouwer to João Luiz. For those in the know, this alone would suffice to attest to João Luiz’s importance in the history of Brazilian concert guitar.