New York Guitar Seminar: Sérgio Assad

Born in 1952 into a musical family in Mococa, a small city about 150 miles north of São Paulo, Sérgio Assad began writing for the guitar not long after he started playing the instrument. He was soon arranging and writing original pieces for the guitar duo with his brother, Odair, which continues to this day. He later studied conducting and composition at the Escola Nacional de Música in Rio de Janeiro, and worked privately with Brazilian composer Esther Scliar. 

He has concentrated on repertoire fo guitar duo, with arrangements of music by Piazzolla, Villa Lobos, and Ginastera, as well as baroque music and works by twentieth-century composers. He has composed over a hundred works for guitar, many of which have become standards in guitar repertoire. His Aquarelle for solo guitar was the required contemporary work for the 2002 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) Competition in Miami, and he also wrote the set piece for the GFA Competition in 2008. That year, he received a Latin Grammy for his original compositionTahhyya Li Ossoulina. 

Assad’s orchestral compositions include the ballet Scarecrow; the concerto Mikis for guitar and strings; Fantasia Carioca for two guitars and chamber orchestra; Interchange, a concerto for guitar quartet and orchestra that the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet premiered with the San Antonio Symphony in 2009; the concerto Originis for violin, guitar duo, and orchestra, which was recorded live with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and featured the Assads and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg as soloists; the concerto Phases for guitar duo and orchestra, premiered by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2011 with the Assad Brothers as soloists; and the concerto Popular do Rio, which was commissioned by the GFA and Cordoba Guitar Festival and had its debut in June 2015 with Pablo Sáinz-Villegas as soloist.