Dança Dos Escravos

Egberto Gismonti’s hands turn any instrument into gold, but there’s something utterly transportive about the way they handle the guitar. Case in point is the 15-minute title track of Dança dos Escravos, which broadcasts every enchantment of his art in high definition. Glistening with autobiographical detail, the music kneads the past into the dough of the present as a gift for the future. By turns ecstatic and dreamlike, Gismonti’s traversal of self-penned material on this solo album breathes with total authenticity, leaping from his fingertips with the force of a song vying to be heard—and that it must.