Solo is the third album that the Brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist Egberto Gismonti made for ECM, and the one he recorded entirely alone. It came after Dança das Cabeças, his duo with the percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, and Sol do Meio Dia. On the second the pair were joined by Jan Garbarek, Collin Walcott and Ralph Towner. Here the two sides of his music sit next to each other: long pieces for eight-string guitar and voice, and tightly written pieces at the piano.
The album was recorded in November 1978 at Talent Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Gismonti plays super 8-string guitar, 8-string guitar and piano, adds surdo and cooking bells, and sings without words. A note on the sleeve states that there are no guitar overdubs. Gismonti wrote the liner notes himself, and the cover photograph is by Wilton Montenegro.
The twenty-minute opening suite, Selva Amazonica / Pau Rolou, begins with resonant eight-string guitar and wordless singing. Surdo rhythms come in, and the second part turns slower and hymn-like over the wavering sound of the cooking bells. Ano Zero, written with Geraldo Eduardo Carneiro, and Frevo move to the piano, where Gismonti's melodic writing is at its most delicate. Salvador is the one piece for the ordinary eight-string guitar, and it closes on a passage close to song. Ciranda Nordestina ends the record with a half-dreaming introduction of bells, out of which the piano opens into broad, colourful lines.
The record has divided listeners along the line between jazz and Brazilian music. Reviewing it in Jazz Journal in May 1980, Max Harrison praised the recorded sound and called Gismonti a good guitarist. He still found the guitar pieces "furiously busy, though without any sense of development", and heard no jazz in them. Later readings have been warmer. In ECM Reviews in 2011, Tyran Grillo preferred "the earthiness of Gismonti alone" to his group projects and placed the piano pieces close to Keith Jarrett at his best.
This is the CD edition of ECM 1136, first released in 1979.
