Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Luiz Floriano Bonfá was born on October 17, 1922 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He studied weekly with Uruguayan classical guitarist Isaías Sávio from the age of 11, spending five hours traveling to and from the guitarist’s Santa Teresa home. However his extraordinary dedication and talent for the guitar, Sávio excused the youngster’s inability to pay for his lessons.

Bonfá first gained widespread exposure in Brazil in 1947 when he was featured on Rio’s Rádio Nacional. He was a member of the vocal group Quitandinha Serenaders in the late Forties. As a composer his first compositions such as Ranchinho de Palha and O Vento Não Sabe were recorded and performed by Brazilian crooner Dick Farney in the 1950s. His first hit song was De Cigarro em Cigarro, recorded by Nora Ney in 1957.

Farney introduced Luiz to Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, the leading songwriting team behind the worldwide explosion of Brazilian jazz/pop music in the late 1950s and 1960s. He collaborated with them and with other prominent Brazilian musicians and artists in productions of de Moraes’ anthological play Orfeu da Conceição, which several years later gave origin to Marcel Camus’ film Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro).

Bonfá wrote some of the original music featured in the film, including the numbers “Samba de Orfeu” and his most famous composition, “Manhã de Carnaval” (of which Carl Sigman later wrote a different set of English lyrics titled “A Day in the Life of a Fool”), which has been among the top ten standards played worldwide.

As a composer and performer, he was at heart an exponent of the bold, lyrical, lushly orchestrated, and emotionally charged samba-canção style that predated the arrival of João Gilberto’s more refined and subdued bossa nova style. Bonfá became a highly visible ambassador of Brazilian music in the United States beginning with the famous November 1962 Bossa Nova concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Luiz worked with Quincy Jones, George Benson, Stan Getz, and Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley sang his composition Almost in Love with lyrics by Randy Starr in the 1968 MGM film Live a Little, Love a Little. His composition The Gentle Rain with lyrics by Matt Dubey, and Sambolero have been recorded by numerous jazz musicians of the decades.

Guitarist and composer Luiz Bonfá, who played in a polyphonic style, harmonizing melody lines in a manner similar to that made famous by Wes Montgomery, passed away at 78 in Rio de Janeiro on January 12, 2001.

More Posts: guitar