By: Dr. Matt Warnock

Matt Warnock Demonstrating Chords in SJDR

Rio de Janeiro. Sao Paulo. Salvador. Brasilia. Belo Horizonte. Five of Brazil’s most beautiful, famous and visited cities, but I would argue for one more city to be added to this list, Sao Joao Del Rei. From a musical and cultural standpoint, this small, out of the way city of 75,000 people is a goldmine for guitarists, and all fans of the arts, which definitely doesn’t receive the attention it deserves compared to its much larger and more famous counterparts.

Two of the reasons that the city is an undervalued destination for guitarists are the local university’s music program and the annual Inverno Cultural festival that runs for the last two weeks of July at multiple venues across the city. With the recent addition of Dr. Guilherme Vincens to the university’s staff, as both a professor of guitar and director of the music department, and to the festival’s planning committee, where he is co-chair of the music division, both of these programs are growing at an incredible rate, which should guarantee that SJDR doesn’t remain a musical hideaway for very long.

This past summer I was invited to teach and perform for a week as part of the city’s Inverno Cultural festival, an opportunity that I emphatically accepted as I had had the opportunity to teach and play in SJDR earlier in the year and had fallen in love with the town, its people and the local music scene. Luckily enough, I arrived in SJDR a few days early and was able to enjoy the many concerts, clinics and workshop that were held all day, every day during the festival’s two-week run.

Having little background in Portuguese, besides knowing how to order a beer from previous trips to the South American nation, I embarked on an intensive, five-week course in order to get my Portuguese chops up to a level where I could teach each class in Brazil’s native tongue. I have to say, for such a short amount of time studying, I found that once I was in the classroom, speaking with students for four to six hours a day, I was able to communicate on a level where I was at least understood, even if my pronunciation occasionally invoked a few giggles from the students.

During my week long course on jazz-guitar improvisation, I meet with the students for four hours each afternoon on the University’s newly built campus extension which houses the music department. The students came from a wide variety of backgrounds, and were at various levels in their musical development, but one thing that they all shared was an eagerness to learn and an enjoyment of all things guitar.

Possessing such a desire to absorb new information by the students made my job very easy. None of the students were shy about performing in front of their peers, often improvising with a technique or concept that they had just learned minutes earlier. They asked intelligent questions, dove into the material with the utmost effort and practiced for hours each night so that they were prepared for the next day’s class. Because the students worked so hard, we were able to cover a large amount of information in a short time, including chord-scale relationships, motivic development, idiomatic jazz rhythms and chord substitutions.

Apart from teaching my course on jazz improvisation, I also performed an evening concert alongside the university’s guitar ensemble, Dr. Guilherme Vincens, Bruno Faria and Luciano Moraes. After the guitar ensemble and Moraes performed two great sets of music, I finished the concert by playing some good ole’ American jazz standards and then invited Faria and Vincens to the stage for a freely improvised piece titled “Thezz Foodzz Libraryzzz,” which we had conceived of earlier that day. The concert was a great experience, the room was full, the crowd was into the music and everyone played well. It was the perfect way to end my week in SJDR.

While the locals, and to some extent people from neighboring communities, are well aware of the cultural gem that is SJDR, with the success of events like the Inverno Cultural, and the ever growing university music department, it won’t be long before word spreads on this small, artistically-rich city. If you’re planning to head on vacation to Brazil do yourself a favor, visit Ipanema beach in Rio, the jungles of the Amazon and the thriving metropolis of Sao Paulo, then had on over to SJDR, you’ll be glad you did.

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Photo Gallery

23 INVERNO CULTURAL DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SAO JOAO DEL REI Recital: Paisagens Sonoras com Violao - Luciano Moraes (Sao Paulo/SP), Matt Warnock (EUA), Guilherme Vincens (Sao Joao del Rei/MG) e o Quarteto de violoes da UFSJ Local: Teatro do Campus Santo Antonio foto/divulgacao: Netun Lima

23 INVERNO CULTURAL DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SAO JOAO DEL REI Oficina: Improvisao Jazzistica para Guitarra e Violao Professor: Dr. Matt Warnock Local: CTAN foto/divulgacao: Netun Lima

23 INVERNO CULTURAL DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SAO JOAO DEL REI Oficina: Improvisao Jazzistica para Guitarra e Violao Professor: Dr. Matt Warnock Local: CTAN foto/divulgacao: Netun Lima

23 INVERNO CULTURAL DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SAO JOAO DEL REI Recital: Paisagens Sonoras com Violao - Luciano Moraes (Sao Paulo/SP), Matt Warnock (EUA), Guilherme Vincens (Sao Joao del Rei/MG) e o Quarteto de violoes da UFSJ Local: Teatro do Campus Santo Antonio foto/divulgacao: Netun Lima

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