Egberto Gismonti was born in 1947 in Carmo, Brazil. He started his musical studies with the piano at the early age of seven. Also studied classical music for 15 years, with Nadia Boulanger (orchestration and analysis) in Paris, and with composer Jean Barraqué, a disciple of Schönberg and Webern.

Returning to Brazil, Gismonti began to glimpse a reality broader than the classical world of music. Ravel's ideas of orchestration and chord voicing attracted him, as well as the "choro", a Brazilian instrumental popular music where varied kinds of guitars are featured. In order to be able to play such music Gismonti made the transition from piano to gu...