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Cellist John-Henry Crawford has parlayed major competition wins into a flourishing international career. Crawford has been a pioneer in using social media on the Internet to communicate his music-making.

Crawford was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on January 21, 1993. His grandfather, Dr. Robert Popper, fled Austria after Kristallnacht with a two-centuries-old cello; Crawford now plays that instrument, using a 1790 Tourte bow. Crawford studied cello as a youth with Andres Diaz at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. At 15, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, studying there with Peter Wiley and Carter Brey. He went on for an Artist Diploma at the Manhattan School of Music, where his teacher was Philippe Muller, and a master's degree at the Juilliard School, studying with longtime Juilliard Quartet member Joel Krosnick. Crawford has also taken lessons with Hans Jørgen Jensen in Chicago. In Chicago, Crawford appeared on radio station WFMT on its Impromptu series and began an ongoing chamber music partnership with pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion. Crawford won prizes at the American String Teachers National Solo Competition, the Lynn Harrell Competition of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Competition, and other events. He has held fellowships at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico, the National Arts Centre of Canada, the Fontainebleau Schools in France, and other institutions.

Crawford has appeared in concert in many U.S. states as well as in countries across the Western Hemisphere, France, Germany, and Switzerland. He has performed at the Louvre Museum in Paris as part of its international concert series. Winning the Philadelphia Orchestra's Greenfield Competition brought a solo debut with that ensemble, and he has also performed concertos with the Memphis Symphony, the Shreveport Symphony, and the Highland Park Strings. Crawford's social media accounts have tens of thousands of followers, and he attracted viewers in similar numbers for his #The1000DayJourney project, which offered daily videos of his performance and practice sessions. Crawford made his recording debut in 2021 with Asuncion on the Orchid Classics recital album Dialogo, featuring music by Brahms, Ligeti, and Shostakovich, and he has continued to record for Orchid Classics. In 2022, he issued the solo album ��ǰ�����ó��: The Music of Latin America. He and Asuncion reunited in 2023 for the album Voice of Rachmaninoff, and in 2024, he recorded cello-and-orchestra music by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra on Orchid Classics. ~ James Manheim

Pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion has racked up a number of high-profile chamber music partners in performance and on recordings. He launched the FilAm Music Foundation to promote Filipino classical artists in the U.S.

Asuncion (the name is Filipino and has no accent mark) was born in the Philippines around 1973; he gave his age as 45 in a 2018 interview with The FilAm magazine. He attended the Philippine High School for the Arts, a specialized institution created by former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Asuncion was one of five siblings, all of whom were musical. His father, often working in the Middle East, discouraged their musical ambitions, but his mother supported his dreams. Asuncion did well in school and, after graduating, found himself in demand as an accompanist for singers and orchestras in the Philippines. He made his classical debut in a concert with the Manila Chamber Orchestra when he was 18. In 1993, he accompanied the Philippine Madrigal Singers on a U.S. tour, and its director, Andrea Veneracion, suggested that he was stagnating in the Philippines and should consider moving to the U.S. Asuncion accepted the suggestion and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, receiving a master's degree in piano performance there in 1999. That year, he also appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York, helped by a Filipino-American family named Jongco, who promoted his career and sold tickets to his concerts. Asuncion went on for a doctorate at the University of Maryland, where his principal teacher was Rita Sloan. He received his degree in 2007.

Asuncion has been especially well known as an accompanist, and it was in that capacity that he made his recording debut in 2012, backing cellist Joseph Johnson in cello sonatas by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. He has performed chamber music with major artists such as cellists Lynn Harrell, Antonio Meneses, and Zuill Bailey, and violinist Cho-Liang Lin. For three seasons, he was a member of the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and served on the chamber music faculty of its summer festival as well as that of the Aspen Music Festival. He is also a solo artist who has appeared in several countries, with conductors including Mei-Ann Chen, Zeev Dorman, and crossover vocalist Bobby McFerrin. Asuncion has appeared at leading U.S. festivals, including the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music in the Vineyards in northern California. In 2021, he backed cellist John-Henry Crawford on the Orchid Classics album Dialogo, and he and Crawford returned in 2023 on Orchid Classics with Voice of Rachmaninoff. ~ James Manheim

Progressive Cuban composer and conductor Leo Brouwer was encouraged musically by his father, an amateur guitarist, and began playing the guitar when he was 13. He then became a descendant in an important guitar lineage: Isaac Nicola, his first real instructor, had studied under Emilio Pujol, who himself had been a student of Francisco Tárrega.

Brouwer gave his first performance at 17 and soon was composing music as well. His Prelude was written in 1956 followed by Fugue in 1959. He furthered his musical education in America, studying composition at the Juilliard School and at Hart College in Hartford.

He became director of the Music Department of the Cinema Institute of Cuba in 1961 as well as professor of composition in the Music Conservatory and musical advisor to the National Radio and Television Chair of Havana. He was also named director of the experimental department of the Cuban Institute of Cinema Arts and Industry, where he continued his own work as composer.

Brouwer was the first Cuban composer to use aleatory forms in his compositions. His varied output includes many works for guitar; percussion; prepared and non-prepared piano; a ballet; a chorus of 12 members, three children, and harp; and several orchestral pieces. He has also written music for more than 100 films.

Brouwer's early compositions reflect a Cuban influence and are strongly rhythmic while his later works veer towards a more minimalist style. His passion for the guitar has remained and he is perhaps best known for his Etudes Simples, a group of 20 studies for the classical guitar where technique and musicality function as one. Brouwer has also explored the possibilities of large-scale works for the guitar, particularly in a piece written for the 1979 Esztergom Guitar Competition in Hungary. For the event, Brouwer composed a piece utilizing an orchestra comprised of 200 guitarists.

Beyond his compositional output, Brouwer has conducted some of the world's leading orchestras including the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin, BBC Concert Orchestra, Orchestra Nouvelle Philharmonic de Paris, and the Symphonic Orchestra of Madrid. In addition, Brouwer retains duties as principal conductor of the Cordoba Symphony in Spain, artistic director of the Havana Symphony and a member of the International Council of Music. Brouwer has also participated as a guitarist and composer in the festivals of Aldeburgh, Avignon, Edinburgh, Spoleto, Berlin, Toronto, Martinique, and Rome, among others.

Manuel Ponce was a Mexican pianist and composer whose style underwent a profound change in midlife; his works are clearly divisible into two types. The earlier style was derived primarily from the brilliant salon style of Moszkowski and Chaminade, and is represented by numerous light works for the piano and a huge quantity of sentimental songs. After studying with Dukas, Ponce developed a style that combined French Impressionism and neo-Classical contrapuntal techniques. Most of his guitar music and the majority of his more serious and larger works were written in this style. In addition to the songs and early piano works, Ponce composed a piano concerto, several large symphonic works for orchestra, the Concierto del sur for guitar and orchestra, which was premiered by Segovia, some chamber music, two piano sonatas, and a large quantity of guitar music.

Born in 1882, Ponce had no important teachers during his childhood in Mexico. In 1895 he was made organist of Saint Diego, Aguascalientes, and in 1900 he went to Mexico City to study piano with Vicente Mañes. From 1901 until 1904 he supported himself as an organist, teacher and music critic back in Aguascalientes. Ponce left for Europe in 1904, giving his first recital abroad in St. Louis on the way. He stayed in Berlin, teaching and concertizing until his return to Mexico City in 1909 to succeed Castro as the piano instructor at the Mexico City Conservatory. During this time, his compositions became fairly popular in Latin countries, and his renown grew; he became conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra from 1917-1919. In 1925, Ponce moved to Paris and edited a music periodical; it was during this period that he studied with Dukas and reformulated his compositional style. He returned to Mexico in 1933, and remained there until his death. Many of Ponce's earlier works have faded into obscurity, but some of his songs, particularly Estrellita (1914), became enormously popular, and are still occasionally performed. Although most of his guitar pieces have become part of the standard repertory, his major works are seldom performed outside of Mexico.

It's not hyperbole to say that Astor Piazzolla is the single most important figure in the history of tango, a towering giant whose shadow looms large over everything that preceded and followed him. Piazzolla's place in Argentina's greatest cultural export is roughly equivalent to that of Duke Ellington in jazz -- the genius composer who took an earthy, sensual, even disreputable folk music and elevated it into a sophisticated form of high art. But even more than Ellington, Piazzolla was also a virtuosic performer with a near-unparalleled mastery of his chosen instrument, the bandoneon, a large button accordion noted for its unwieldy size and difficult fingering system. In Piazzolla's hands, tango was no longer strictly a dance music; his compositions borrowed from jazz and classical forms, creating a whole new harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary made for the concert hall more than the ballroom (which was dubbed "nuevo tango"). Some of his devices could be downright experimental -- he wasn't afraid of dissonance or abrupt shifts in tempo and meter, and he often composed segmented pieces with hugely contrasting moods that interrupted the normal flow and demanded the audience's concentration. The complexity and ambition of Piazzolla's oeuvre brought him enormous international acclaim, particularly in Europe and Latin America, but it also earned him the lasting enmity of many tango purists, who attacked him mercilessly for his supposed abandonment of tradition (and even helped drive him out of the country for several years). But Piazzolla always stuck to his guns, and remained tango's foremost emissary to the world at large up until his death in 1992.

Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on March 11, 1921. His parents were poor Italian immigrants who moved to New York City in 1924, affording the young Piazzolla extensive exposure to jazz artists like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. His father also played tango records by the early masters, especially the legendary vocalist/composer Carlos Gardel, and gave Astor a bandoneon for his ninth birthday. In addition to lessons on that instrument (which encompassed American music, like Gershwin, as well as tango), Piazzolla also studied with classical pianist Bela Wilda in 1933, becoming an ardent fan of Bach and Rachmaninoff. Around the same time, the budding prodigy met and played with Carlos Gardel, appearing as a newspaper boy in Gardel's watershed tango film El Dia que Me Quieras. The teenaged Piazzolla turned down an offer to tour South America with Gardel in 1935, a fortuitous decision that kept him out of the tragic plane crash that claimed Gardel's life.

In 1936, Piazzolla's family returned to Mar del Plata, and his passion for tango music was fired anew by violinist Elvino Vardaro's sextet. The still-teenaged Piazzolla moved to Buenos Aires in 1938, seeking work as a musician. After about a year of dues-paying, he caught on with the widely renowned Anibal Troilo orchestra, where he spent several high-profile years. In the meantime, he continued his study of piano and music theory, counting future classical composer Alberto Ginastera (1941) and pianist Raul Spivak (1943) as his teachers. He began composing for Troilo during this period, although his more ambitious, classically influenced pieces were often edited for accessibility's sake. In 1944, Piazzolla left Troilo's group to become the orchestra leader behind singer Francisco Fiorentino; two years later, he formed his own group, playing mostly traditional tangos, yet already with hints of modernism. This group broke up in 1949, and Piazzolla, unsure of his musical direction, sought a way to leave tango behind for more refined pursuits. He studied Ravel, Bartók, and Stravinsky, also immersing himself in American jazz, and worked mostly on his compositional skills for a few years. His 1953 piece "Buenos Aires" caused a stir for its use of bandoneon in a classical orchestral setting.

In 1954, Piazzolla won a scholarship to study in Paris with the hugely influential Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Quincy Jones, among many others. Boulanger encouraged Piazzolla not to ignore tango, but to reinvigorate the form with his jazz and classical training. Piazzolla returned home in 1955 and immediately set the tango world on its ear, forming an octet that played tango as self-contained chamber music, rather than accompaniment for vocalists or dancers. The howls of protest from traditionalists continued unabated until 1958, when Piazzolla disbanded the group and went to New York City; there he worked as an arranger and experimented with a fusion of jazz and tango, also composing the famed "Adios Nonino," a lovely ode to his recently departed father.

Returning to Buenos Aires in 1960, Piazzolla formed his first quintet, the Quinteto Tango Nuevo, which would become the primary vehicle for his forward-looking vision. Over the course of the '60s, Piazzolla would refine and experiment heavily, pushing the formal structure of tango to its breaking point. In 1965, he made a record of his concert at New York's Philharmonic Hall, and also cut an album of poems by Jorge Luis Borges set to music. In 1967, Piazzolla struck a deal with poet Horacio Ferrer to collaborate exclusively with each other, resulting in the groundbreaking so-called "operita" Maria de Buenos Aires, which was premiered by singer Amelita Baltar in 1968 (she would later become Piazzolla's second wife). Piazzolla and Ferrer next collaborated on a series of "tango-canciones" (tango songs) which produced his first genuine commercial hit, "Balada Para un Loco" ("Ballad of a Madman"). In addition to composing songs and more elaborate pieces for orchestra (such as 1970's El Pueblo Joven), Piazzolla also flexed his muscles scoring numerous films of the period.

The '70s started out well for Piazzolla, as an acclaimed European tour brought the opportunity to form a nine-piece group to play his music in especially lush fashion. However, all was not well. Argentina's government was taken over by a conservative military faction, and everything that Piazzolla symbolized -- modern refinement, an ostensible lack of respect for tradition -- suddenly became politically unwelcome. In 1973, Piazzolla suffered a heart attack, and after recovering, he decided that, with sentiments running high against him, it would be wiser for him to live in Italy. There he formed a group called the Conjunto Electronico, which placed bandoneon at the forefront of what was essentially, instrumentation-wise, an electric jazz ensemble; this period also produced one of his most celebrated compositions, "Libertango." In 1974, Piazzolla cut an album with jazz baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan called Summit, with backing by Italian musicians; the following year, he found a new favorite vocal interpreter in Jose Angel Trelles. 1976 brought a major concert back in Buenos Aires, with the Conjunto Electronico premiering the piece "500 Motivaciones."

Tiring of electric music, Piazzolla formed a new quintet in 1978 and toured extensively all over the world, also composing new chamber and symphonic works in the meantime. His reputation grew steadily, making him a prime candidate for exposure in the U.S. during the world-music craze of the latter half of the '80s. In 1986, Piazzolla entered the studio with his quintet and American producer Kip Hanrahan and recorded what he considered the finest album of his career, Tango: Zero Hour. The same year, he played the Montreux Jazz Festival with vibraphonist Gary Burton, resulting in the live set Suite for Vibraphone and New Tango Quintet. The official follow-up to Tango: Zero Hour, The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night, won equally glowing reviews, and Piazzolla staged a major homecoming concert in New York's Central Park in 1987.

Unfortunately, at the height of his international fame (and belated celebration at home), Piazzolla's health began to fail him. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 1988, but recovered well enough to mount an international tour in 1989, including what would be his final concert in Argentina. La Camorra, another excellent recording, was released in 1989, the same year Piazzolla formed a new sextet with an unheard-of two bandoneons. In 1990, he recorded a short album with modern-classical iconoclasts the Kronos Quartet, titled Five Tango Sensations. Sadly, not long afterward, Piazzolla suffered a stroke that left him unable to perform or compose. Almost two years later, on July 5, 1992, he died in his beloved Buenos Aires due to the lingering after-effects, leaving behind a monumental legacy as one of South America's greatest musical figures ever, and a major composer of the 20th century. ~ Steve Huey

A prominent representative of twentieth century Argentine music, Guastavino is recognized for his unique melodic gift and characteristic charm. Approachable, intriguing, and refreshing, Guastavino's music, which includes songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and orchestral compositions, in many ways celebrates the rich cultural tradition and physical beauty of his country. Guastavino started his musical education with piano lessons. After studying chemical engineering, he was awarded a grant in 1938 to study at the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires. However, he decided against entering the Conservatory, preferring private lessons in piano and composition. In Buenos Aires, Guastavino quickly became known as a composer, his works attracting the attention of Argentine and foreign performers. In 1948, a British Council grant enabled Guastavino to travel to England, where he spent two years, performing his songs and piano compositions. In 1949, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played his Romances argentinos (3). Guastavino's visit to England was followed by trips to several other countries, including China and the Soviet Union. Many of Guastavino's best-known works date from the 1940s, compositions such as Gato (1940), for piano; Canciones argentinas (4) (1949), as well as the immensely popular songs Se equivoco la paloma (1941) and La rosa y el sauce (1942). During the 1960s and 1970s, Guastavino devoted most of his time to composing and teaching. Working with Leon Benaros, a noted Argentine poet, Guastavino composed some 60 songs, which exemplify his fine lyricism and descriptive powers, particularly in songs about nature. In 1975, however, possibly discouraged by his declining popularity, Guastavino stopped composing. Fortunately, he returned to composition in 1987, encouraged by Carlos Vilo, leader of a chamber ensemble, who was interested in performing Guastavino's song and other works. Guastavino's fruitful collaboration with Vilo's group lasted until 1992, when he stopped composing for good.

Egberto Gismonti is world-renowned as a multi-instrumentalist and composer. He was profoundly influenced by Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos, his works reflecting the musical diversity of Brazil. From the ���غ��� Indians' batuque to the Carioca samba and choro, through the Northeastern frevo, baião, and forró, Gismonti captures the true essence of the Brazilian soul in a way that is primitive, yet sophisticated, and reflects it through his personal vision, elaborated by years of classic training and literacy in a wealth of musical languages in which jazz plays a significant role.

From a musical family, in which his grandfather and his uncle Edgar were bandleaders, he started to take piano and theory classes at five. At that time, he also started to learn the flute and the clarinet, eventually taking the violão (acoustic guitar) in his teens. Following the piano classical tradition because of his father, he embraced the guitar to please his Italian mother, who was very fond of serenatas. Trying to transpose the piano's polyphonic quality for the guitar, he ended several years later with three custom-made instruments (ten-, 12-, and 14-stringed) and a personally developed two-hand technique. At eight, he started to study piano with Brazilian masters Jacques Klein and Aurélio Silveira for a 15-year apprenticeship. Establishing himself in Nova Friburgo, a small town near Rio, for one year and four months, he attended the Nova Friburgo Music Conservatory. Awarded with a scholarship to study classical music in Vienna, Austria, at 20, he refused it in order to delve deeper in the popular side. In October 1968, his composition "O Sonho," arranged by him for a 100-piece orchestra, was presented at the third International Song Festival (FIC), promoted by TV Globo, Rio, by the group Os Três Morais. This song, with its uncanny orchestration, provoked enthusiasm around and was recorded 18 different times by several international artists. Soon after in that year, he left Brazil for France, where he became the conductor and orchestrator for the French singer Marie Laforêt in an association that lasted for one and a half years. It was instrumental for him to meet and became a pupil of the great masters Jean Barraqué (1928-1973), a disciple of Anton Webern, and Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), a former consultant to Ygor Stravinsky. The additional importance of these two icons upon Gismonti's career was to stress the unique richness of his country's background and urge him to pursue a singular expression rooted in the cabocla and mestiça tradition. This would cause him to return to Brazil in 1971. His first LP, Egberto Gismonti, was already released in 1969 through Elenco. There, he sang his own songs and had a partnership with the bossa nova composer Paulo Sérgio Vale. Also in 1969, he presented himself at the San Remo Festival in Italy. In 1970, he toured through Europe, recording two singles in France, one LP in Italy, one in Brazil (Sonho 70), and one LP in Germany (Orfeu Novo). His song "Mercador de Serpentes" was presented at the fifth FIC in 1970. Returning to Brazil in 1971, he settled in Teresópolis, another small town close to Rio. He played in several venues in Brazil and his music was included on the soundtracks of the movies A Penúltima Donzela (Fernando Amaral, 1969), Confissões de Frei Abóbora (Brás Chediak, 1971), and Em Família (Paulo Porto, 1971). In 1972, he recorded Água e Vinho (in partnership with poet Geraldo Carneiro) and in 1973, Egberto Gismonti and Adademia de Danças, all three LPs through EMI/Odeon, the latter of which was the turning point when he began to stress his instrumental work. After its recording, the producer said it made no sense at all. He received a note from EMI/Odeon saying that, due to Brazil's economic difficulties, that would be the last album of Gismonti's career: it was an album outside of any category, with 25-minute tracks, expensively produced with synths and orchestra. This album was awarded with the Golden Record in Brazil. From 1972 to 1991, he would record 19 albums for EMI/Odeon. In 1974, he accepted an invitation to play at a festival in Berlin, Germany, and asked Hermeto Pascoal and Naná Vasconcelos to join him in his presentation. He then met ECM's CEO, Manfred Eicher. Returning to Brazil, he received a letter from ECM in 1975, inviting him to record with them. Not knowing what would be the importance of that label, he postponed the response until the end of 1976. Then he accepted the invitation, imagining he'd record with the all-star Brazilian group he was performing with by then: drummer/percussionist Robertinho Silva, bassist Luis Alves, and saxophonist/flutist Nivaldo Ornelas. But the Brazilian military government had imposed a high fee for all leaving Brazilians at about 7,000 dollars. Being that cipher prohibitive for anyone in that group but him, he decided to record solo. Fearing that challenge, he was wandering through Norway when he met a Brazilian actor who was his friend. Invited to his home, he met Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos there. Having to record the album in three days, he decided to have Vasconcelos into it, and asked by him to describe the album's concept, he explained that both of them had a common history, and he proposed Vasconcelos use that album for telling it. It was the history of two boys wandering through a dense, humid forest, full of insects and animals, keeping a 180-feet distance from each other. He knew Vasconcelos would accept without hesitation, and he did. His LP Dança das Cabeças with Vasconcelos received several contradictory international awards reflecting Brazilian cultural richness: in England, it was awarded as a pop record; in the U.S., as folklore music; in Germany, as classical music. Either way, it changed both artists' lives: Vasconcelos immediately became a disputed international artist, touring worldwide; Gismonti returned to Brazil and decided to research ���غ��� folklore. In the heart of the ���غ��� forest, Alto Xingu, he tried to make contact with the Yawaiapitì tribe, playing his flute for two weeks until head chief Sapaim invited him to his home. They shared no common language other than music and Gismonti spent about a month living and learning with them, upon the condition of spreading the forest people's values. Two years later, with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, percussionist Colin Walcott, and guitarist Ralph Towner, he recorded Sol do Meio-Dia. His LP Solo, released that next year, sold 100,000 copies in the U.S. In 1981, with Garbarek and bassist Charlie Haden, he recorded the LP Magico. The same year, the trio toured Europe, including a concert at the Berlin Jazz Festival, and recorded a second Magico album, entitled Folksongs. In 1981, Gismonti again toured with Haden and Garbarek, performing throughout Europe. Also in that year, he recorded with his all-star group Academia de Danças (drummer Nenê, saxophonist/flutist Mauro Senise, and bassist Zeca Assunção) the double album Sanfona. With Vasconcelos, he recorded Duas Vozes in 1985. In 1989, he recorded Dança dos Escravos and in 1990, following the release of Dança das Cabeças, Gismonti toured the United States with his group, which included cellist Jaquinho Morelembaum, flutist/saxophonist Nivaldo Ornellas, and Edu Mello E Souza on keyboards. Also in 1990, he recorded Infância, accompanied by Nando Carneiro (guitar/keyboards), Zeca Assumpção (bass), and cellist Jaquinho Morelembaum. With the same group, he recorded in 1993 Música de Sobrevivência, an album inspired by the writings of the Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros, who reflects in his work the Brazilian duality of the cultivated Portuguese tradition and the massive illiteracy disseminated in that country, which, notwithstanding, deeply influences the official language. In 1995, he recorded with the State Symphonic Orchestra of Lithuania the CD Meeting Point. In 1996, Gismonti recorded with Nando Carneiro and Zeca Assumpção for the CD Zig Zag. As a businessman, he owns the successful label Carmo, which has several joint ventures with ECM. He also performed an almost impossible task: He bought the rights for all of his phonograms through EMI/Odeon for worldwide publishing, with the exception of Brazil. However, music continues to be his main focus. In 2009, Gismonti released the two-disc Saudacoes which featured one disc of his seven part composition, "Sertões Veredas -- Tributo à Miscigenação," and a second disc of guitar duets with his son Alexandre Gismonti. ~ Alvaro Neder

As a young man, Heitor Villa-Lobos packed his cello on his back and headed into the wilds of Brazil. In the spirit of Bartók and Kodaly in Eastern Europe, he was in search of the native song of his homeland; like those composers, he found it, studied it, and absorbed its essential qualities. Equally important to the young composer was the music of J.S. Bach; in the blending of these two influences, Villa-Lobos created a distinctive, very personal musical vocabulary. His music was further colored by a love for both Puccini and Wagner as well as an interest in the music of certain of his contemporaries, including Stravinsky and Debussy. Incredibly prolific and versatile, Villa-Lobos explored the complete spectrum of musical genres-producing efforts diverse as a Broadway musical and a harmonica concerto--though only a few of his compositions remain well-known to the musical public.

His father fashioned a cello out of a viola for the young Heitor, who often listened to street musicians playing outside his window. At the age of twelve his father died and his mother forbade him to play the piano. The resourceful young man borrowed a guitar from a friend, taught himself to play it, and began a relationship that resulted in a body of music that is a cornerstone of the repertoire for that instrument. Not only have the Studies (1929) and Preludes (1940) become standard fare for guitarists, but the Guitar Concerto (1951) is one of the most successful pieces of its kind.

Villa-Lobos studied for a short time with Francisco Braga and Ernesto Nazareth, though for all intents and purposes he was self-taught. Still, he had enough talent to cultivate a certain arrogance: it is reported that when he went to Paris in 1923-a time when the city was practially overrun with composers-he was asked with whom he wanted to study. His reply was, "Study with...? They are all going to study with me."

In his late teens, Villa-Lobos studied the cello seriously; his love for the instrument manifested itself in a variety of works that afford it a prominent role. The composer's most famous piece, in fact-the Bachianas Brasilieras No.5 (1938/45)-is scored for eight celli and soprano voice. The first movement of this work has attained a popularity such that a number of primarily non-classical artists-including Joan Baez and Branford Marsalis-have essayed it in recorded performances. Singers Bidú Sayão and Victoria de los Angeles both made classic recordings of the work, each under the baton of the composer. (Villa-Lobos, in fact, often conducted his own works and demonstrated much skill on the podium; a number of his recordings as conductor survive.) The popularity of the Bachiananas Brasilieras No. 5 is not hard to understand. Although Villa-Lobos would write beautiful tunes in such works as the Cello Concerto No. 2 (1953) and in several of the String Quartets, this effort distinguishes itself by the sheer magic of the long-lined melody in the first movement that is intoned first by the singer, then reiterated by the cello.

The immense quantity of music that Villa-Lobos produced provides representation for nearly any standard combination of instruments. As in the cases of other similarly prolific composers, unfortunately, productivity and inspiration are not always complementary in the works of Villa-Lobos. His wind music serves as a perfect example: the Bachianas Brasilieras No. 6 (1938) for flute and bassoon arguably takes a place among the best wind duos ever written. The Duo for Oboe and Bassoon (1957), on the other hand, has relatively little to recommend it (except, perhaps, for the paucity of works for this instrumental pairing) and nothing at all to compensate for its stifling dullness. The Quintette en form de Choros for wind quintet (1928) is an exotic exploration of tone colors and description through musical means, while the Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon of the same year is dry and academic. The sheer volume of Villa-Lobos's output proved difficult to keep track of even for the composer himself. Once, wandering the halls of a music school, he heard a string quartet rehearsing a selection that caught his ear. He entered the studio and inquired what the group had been playing; one of the perplexed players informed Villa-Lobos that it was, in fact, one of the composer's own works.

Villa-Lobos had the ability to compose anywhere, apparently indifferent to all manner of distraction. He was known to sit down and compose in the midst of a party, and during the composition of the Second Cello Concerto wrote as the work's renowned dedicatee, Aldo Parisot, sat nearby, playing from the cello repertoire for hours on end; occassionally the composer would take the instrument from Parisot to demonstrate how he thought a passage should sound. Villa-Lobos composed concertante works not only for the standard solo instruments, but also for their hitherto neglected cousins such as the bassoon (1933), the soprano saxophone (1948), the harp (1953), and the harmonica (1955). His love of unusual sounds led him to write for several native Brazilian percussion instruments as well.

At times the exoticism of the compositional techniques Villa-Lobos employed matched that of the sounds he used. The most striking of such original approaches resulted in one of his most famous works. New York Skyline (1939) took shape, literally, from a tracing of the city's visual profile on a piece of score paper; by designating notes to correspond to the outline, Villa-Lobos created a viable, if not great, orchestral work.

Despite the fertile and singular imagination of their creator, Villa-Lobos's symphonies are almost completely neglected, while his piano concerti, though recorded, are very rarely performed in the United States. His chamber music for strings, similarly worthy, is also available in recorded performances but rarely encountered on concert programs..

Villa-Lobos's influence on music education in his native Brazil was profound.He not only established his own choral music school-Conservatorio Nacional de Canto Orfeonico-in 1942, but also served as superintendent of music education for Rio de Janeiro. His enthusiasm for public music making and choral singing resulted in his conducting some of the largest such ensembles ever assembled. With thirty thousand to forty thousand singers and an orchestra of over a thousand, Villa-Lobos once led this assembly of musicians in a performance of his own choral compositions in the Vasco da Gama Stadium. But rather than use a baton, Villa-Lobos led the musicians with a Brazilian flag.

His death in 1959 ended the career of the most important composer ever to come out of Brazil. Not only did he emerge as one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth century, but his works have also come to represent Brazilian classical music. Villa-Lobos perfectly blended the diverse elements that he loved into a highly personal vocabulary that, even when less than totally inspired, is still attractive, exotic, and unique. ~ Eric Goldberg