Bio:
Gui Duvignau is a French-Brazilian bass player and composer. His multi-cultural background has led to a life of traveling and musical exploration. A jazz musician in essence, he also draws inspiration from his experiences performing Rock, Brazilian, and ‘World’ music, as well as his studies in classical contemporary music.
He attended Berklee College of Music where he studied with Vuk Kulenovic, Yakov Gubanov, Greg Hopkins, Ted Pease, John Lockwood, Fernando Huergo, to name a few, receiving his bachelor degree in Jazz Composition.
His first album Porto, in collaboration with singer Sofia Ribeiro was inspired by his time living in Portugal. The album features original compositions by Sofia Ribeiro and Gui Duvignau and was released in 2010 with the support of Portuguese radio station, Antena 2.
His second album Fissura springs from his years in Paris, where it was recorded with Jonathan Orland (Alto sax & clarinet), Julien Pontvianne (Tenor sax & clarinet), Federico Casagrande (Guitar), Thomas Caillou (Guitar) and Thibault Perriard (Drums). It was released in April 2016 on the Parisian label Onze Heures Onzes and selected among the best of the year by the French magazine JazzNews.
Back in São Paulo, Brazil, he led his own groups and performed frequently with trio Improvisado (with Marcelo Castilha and Pedro Ito) and the Carlos Ezequiel trio – including performances with George Garzone and Leitieres Leite, and the recording of the trio’s album Circular with special guests David Binney and Lage Lund.
His travels have led him to New York City where he has had the opportunity to study with jazz and bass legend, Ron Carter, as well as master musicians, Drew Gress, Billy Drummond, Billy Drewes, Brad Shepik, Michael Wolff, among others. In May 2020, he received his master's of music degree from New York University.
His book From the Bottom Up, featuring interviews with master jazz bassists, Ron Carter, Buster Williams, Ron McClure, Mike Richmond, Jay Anderson, Drew Gress, and Christian McBride was published by Ron Carter Books in September 2020.
3,5,8, his third album of original compositions was released in January 2021 by Sunnyside Records and features Billy Drewes (Saxophone), Jeff Hirshfield (Drums), Santiago Leibson (Piano), and Elias Meister (Guitar).
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).