The musician

Dilermando Reis was the first guitarist that I heard and that awakened me to what I consider today of the greatest importance: lyricism and delicacy in interpretation. As I progressed in the study of the guitar and music in general, I came across Baden Powell’s music, which had a great influence on my work, due to its expressiveness and rhythmic vigor. Subsequently came the refinement of João Gilberto. At that time, very sophisticated for my musical perception.

The music of both was presented to me by my first teacher – Heber Alvim – in Divinópolis (MG). He was the first great teacher and mentor that I had in my musical career.

Around 1981 I started to compose. Initially, very spontaneously and without technical criteria. At that time I listened to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig Van Beethoven, and Richard Wagner, a composer that I still hear a lot, very often.

After a few years involved with the music of these great masters, Jazz came into my life, through Bill Evans, Miles Davis and Chet Baker who, after exhausting auditions and analysis of their musical conceptions, brought me back to the Impressionists. Especially Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, continuing my musical education, having classical music as a reference.

Always dedicated to study and research, without neglecting my side as an instrumentalist, I was influenced by great Brazilian composers. Among them, Ernesto Nazareth, João Pernambuco, Pixinguinha, Heitor Villa Lobos and Garoto.

With them I developed my concept of music and saw in me a new world full of lyricism and technical challenges. This was an important phase of my life, when I completely immersed myself in the study of the guitar and composition, spending hours playing choros and sambas and going to the “rodas de choro” in Belo Horizonte.

In 1983 I started in the art of making arrangements and producing, at that time, Long Plays. With this new role in my life, I was able to experience everything I studied and become familiar with the whole family of instruments, in addition to working with a multitude of musicians.

I learned a little from each of them and had the privilege of evaluating myself countless times, avoiding, with each new job, the mistakes made in the previous ones. Music production and arrangements gradually became my main activity, alternating with the concerts and recordings of my original works.

During these years, I expanded my knowledge of the technique of recording and mixing CDs and DVDs and mixing for cinema. I also entered a seductive area – soundtrack – having worked as an arranger and orchestrator of soundtracks for long and short films.

These were great opportunities for me to study the techniques of recording and mixing music for cinema, taking me to study script for theater and cinema and to participate in courses on the history, styles and techniques of this seductive art.

In the last decades, I have maintained a consolidated partnership with several renowned lyricists of Brazilian Popular Music. With Fernando Brant (Im memorian) I composed countless songs that have already been recorded by several performers and I still have unreleased songs that will certainly be recorded.

Nowadays I write frequently with the great author Paulo Sérgio Valle, responsible for many successes known all over the world, in addition to composers of the new generation.

Looking back, I realize that my performance in all these sectors of music gives me the certainty that I am fulfilling a great dream that, through time, has sprouted, been cultivated and flourished in the most intimate of my being.