Yamandu Costa Returns to Dynamite Guitars

Yamandu Costa with his seven-string guitar (photograph by Rodrigo Lopes, courtesy of the Omni Foundation)

Last night Yamandu Costa returned to Herbst Theatre to present the penultimate program in the Dynamite Guitars concert series produced by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Those familiar with his work know that he favors a guitar with seven nylon strings, the seventh string commanding a richer affordance of the lower register. That advantage is balanced by a disadvantage of simple physics: That lowest string has to be retuned after every selection.

Costa is one of those musicians that prefers playing to talking. When he performed in Herbst in April of 2016, he had very little to say; and much of what he did say was in Portuguese. Half a decade later, he seems a bit more comfortable with the English language but still prefers playing to speaking. Since there was no program sheet, one could simply sit back and focus on the music itself, with its diverse rhythms and moods and that solid foundation of a walking bass line.

Costa shared the second half of his program with a guest artist, bandoneon master Richard Scofano. One could not avoid the impression that these two artists had been playing as a duo for some time. Each listened acutely to the other, enabling a “virtuous circle” of thematic call-and-response. Microphones were provided for both instruments, but the ways in which the two players balanced each other had more to do with their mutual attentiveness than with audio engineering.

Readers may recall that this was not the first appearance of a bandoneon in Herbst this season. Almost exactly a month ago Julien Labro brought his instrument to a recital program prepared by the Takás Quartet. The program featured two new compositions for string quartet and bandoneon, as well as a few solo offerings by Labro. While last night’s performance took place in the same venue, the spirit of the occasion evoked dance and jazz clubs, rather than the more serious dispositions of chamber music.

One might say that Scofano allowed the bandoneon to do the things it did best, not only through the spontaneity of his jazzy rhetoric but also through evoking dance halls, rather than sit-still-and-listen concert halls. Everything was in-the-moment in his engagement with Costa, consistently leaving the attentive listener wondering what their duo work would cook up next. For all I know, the entire duo portion of the program was spontaneously improvised, possibly drawing upon tunes familiar to both musicians but just as likely a mutual effort to allow the music to progress as things went along.