Luiz Bonfá – Introspection

Luiz Bonfá's Introspection first appeared in 1972, more than a decade after Bonfá helped carry Brazilian music to an international audience through Black Orpheus. Here, though, he steps away from the wider bossa nova spotlight and into a far more private setting: an almost entirely solo guitar album that shows how much feeling and detail he could draw from the instrument alone.

Bonfá's background in classical guitar is everywhere in these performances, but it never sounds academic. The album brings together Brazilian rhythm, jazz harmony and a strong lyrical sense, with pieces like "Enchanted Mirror," "Reflections" and "Rain" revealing just how precise and expressive his playing could be. Contemporary listeners and later critics alike have singled it out as one of the key titles in his catalogue, partly because its restraint lets the melodic and emotional weight of the music come through so clearly.

That intimacy is a big part of why Introspection has remained so admired. Long unavailable on vinyl, it has also become a collector's title, and this return to the format finally restores one of Bonfá's most personal recordings to the kind of close listening it invites. If you know him mainly through his better-known bossa nova work, this is the record that shows the quieter, more reflective side of his art.

Reviews

• no Bonfá recording reaches the dizzying -- if gently stated -- heights of his art the way Introspection does. - AllMusic.com

Genre: Global