Universo Musical de Egberto Gismonti is a solo guitar album by the Brazilian guitarist Daniel Murray, devoted entirely to the music of Egberto Gismonti. Released in 2019 on Carmo, Gismonti's own label, and produced by the composer, it gathers thirteen pieces, most of them arranged by Murray for six-string and ten-string classical guitars. It is a guitarist's portrait of a composer whose works have long been central to his repertoire.
Murray, born in 1981, trained as a classical guitarist and composer in Brazil and formed a duo with Paulo Porto Alegre for modern and avant-garde music for two guitars. The record is the latest part of a project he calls Universos, after earlier albums of avant-garde repertoire for guitar and tape and of electroacoustic music. The idea took shape after he met Gismonti in July 2015 and began arranging his pieces, starting with Forrobodó. It was recorded and mixed in April 2018 at Visom Digital Studios in Rio de Janeiro, with Guido Pera as engineer and Gismonti co-mixing.
Only Memória e Fado and Choro were written by Gismonti for solo guitar. The rest are Murray's own arrangements, in which he recreates the dense, polyphonic textures that Gismonti, a pianist first, developed on guitars with more than six strings. Maracatu opens with a run of extended sounds before the theme arrives, and Frevo sets out fast contrapuntal lines with a strong rhythmic pulse. In Carmem and Memória e Fado he works with sul tasto colour and harmonics, and the lyrical A Fala da Paixão leads towards the closing Palhaço.
In Songlines in December 2019, Charlotte Algar called the album "a well-balanced tribute" and wrote that "Murray's sparkling technical virtuosity is undeniable". She warned that listeners expecting traditional Maracatu or Choro would hear Gismonti's stylised versions instead. On Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo praised Murray's balance of "clean, classical execution with open expression" and the nocturnal feeling of the session.
This is the CD edition, catalogue number CARMO/18, first released on 23 August 2019, with English liner notes by Murray. Carmo, named after the town where Gismonti was born, is manufactured and marketed by ECM Records.
