Luiz Bonfa: "Night & Day"

It's only fitting that Luiz Bonfa's first album woulud include a song primarily associated with Frank Sinatra. Old Blue Eyes went on to record a bossa nova classic with Antonio Carlos Jobim, 1967's "Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim," capping off the the heights of popularity the genre had reached in the U.S. Bonfa, who went on himself to collobarate with the bossa-leaning jazz player Stan Getz on "Jazz Samba Encore," was one of the foremost progenitors of the bossa nova guitar style along with Jobim.

"Night And Day," from a Smithsonian Folkways reissue of his long-lost solo debut, is a prime example of Bonfa's already-intact mastery of the instrument. In an solo instrumental rendition, the guitarist plays three voices at once, thumbing a walking bass line while plucking high bossa chords and somehow picking out a melody on top of it. It's a display of virtuousity made all the more impressive because it comes in the service of the song; like any great jazz musician, Bonfa takes the standard's melody and takes it to improvisatory new heights, on a single instrument, in just a few minutes. The rest of the album, Live In Rio 1959, is full of similarly unassuming musicianship and complex, beautiful compositions; it's the sound of a man and his guitar humbly achieving perfection.