João Luiz – Guitarist, Composer and Teacher
João Luiz — João Luiz Rezende — is a Brazilian guitarist, composer and educator, and one half of the Brasil Guitar Duo. He is a two-time Latin Grammy nominee and teaches guitar at the Yale School of Music.
From Popular Music to the Classical Guitar
João Luiz began playing the popular music of his native Brazil professionally as a child, and only later trained as a classical guitarist, under his mentor Henrique Pinto. That order matters. Players who come to Brazilian repertoire from the conservatory often have to learn its rhythm as a second language; João Luiz learned it first.
He went on to a master's degree at Mannes College in New York and a doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music, where he held an Augustine Foundation scholarship.
The Brasil Guitar Duo
João Luiz and Douglas Lora met in São Paulo as teenage guitar students, and their partnership has lasted more than twenty years. Henrique Pinto was the duo's principal teacher; they also worked privately with Fabio Zanon, Paulo Martelli, Sérgio Abreu and Alice Artzt. In 2006 they won the Concert Artists Guild Competition.
Two premieres stand out in the duo's work. In 2012 they gave the first performance of Paulo Bellinati's Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. In October 2014, in Havana, they premiered Leo Brouwer's El arco y la lira together with the cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Carlos Prieto. Our Bellinati repertoire guide introduces the other side of that collaboration.
Composer and Commissioner
João Luiz writes as well as plays. His works include the harp concerto Recife, first performed in 2019, the concertino MadriAfro I for guitar and strings, first performed in 2022, and the string quartet Saravá. His Improviso No. 3 has been recorded for our Siccas Media programme by the guitarist Henrique Carvalho.
He has also commissioned and premiered new music by other composers, among them Leo Brouwer and Sérgio Assad. Assad's 24 Studies for Guitar are dedicated to him, and the recording below — Miltoniana, from that cycle — was made for our Siccas Media programme.
Teaching
João Luiz is Director of Chamber Music at CUNY Hunter College and, since 2025, guitar professor at the Yale School of Music. He received the CUNY Feliks Gross Award in 2023, and in 2024 an APCA award for the best premiere of a new work.
Watch João Luiz
Read more about this recording in our article on João Luiz playing Miltoniana by Sérgio Assad.
For more Brazilian guitar music, see our portrait of the Duo Siqueira Lima and our article on João Gilberto and the nylon-string guitar, or meet more players in our list of great classical guitarists.
