13. Egberto GismontiAcademia de Danças
This one I discovered more recently. I’m a big Hermeto Pascoal fan; I was turned onto Hermeto by Kamasi Washington when we were teenagers. But, again, it’s Brazilian and stuff like that you have to seek out, you have to want to find it yourself because it doesn’t always get translated.
I didn’t know about Egberto Gismonti at first, but I spent a lot of time listening to Hermeto, and I remember I went on tour with Miguel Atwood Ferguson in the band with me at one point. And Miguel is also an astute follower of music, to say the least. We were listening to Hermeto Pascoal backstage and Miguel turns and he goes ‘Is this Hermeto? Do you know about his friend Egberto Gismonti?’ and I was like, ‘no’. Miguel proceeds to tell me this is the person that plays bass with Hermeto Pasqual, and he’s a beast of a composer. He played me the album, and I was floored. I was completely overtaken by this album and the composition.
It tells such a story – Egberto Gismonti’s albums in general tell a story – but this specific album, there’s some moments on it that are so intense that it’s hard to listen to them. It’s hard to play one song for somebody, but if I’ve ever played the record for somebody, it has to be listened to very loud.
