Luiz Bonfá
Introspection
Brazilian guitar music has a way of folding the whole century into a single instrument, and few players carried more of it in their hands than Luiz Bonfá. Most listeners know him through the songs he wrote for Orfeu Negro, the ones that helped carry bossa nova out of Rio and across the world. Introspection, cut for RCA in 1972, is the quieter counterweight to that fame: eight original pieces for solo guitar, recorded at a moment when Bonfá had stopped chasing the hit and turned inward.