Marco Pereira on the Classical Guitar: The Essential Guide

This guide is part of our overview of the essential classical guitar repertoire. Marco Pereira (born 1950, Brazil) is a Brazilian guitarist and composer who stands at a rare crossroads: a musician trained in the European classical tradition, fluent in jazz harmony, and deeply rooted in the full range of Brazilian popular music — from choro and samba to baião, maracatu, and frevo. His career as performer, composer, and educator has been one of the most influential in the history of the Brazilian guitar.

Formation and Early Career

Pereira studied classical guitar in São Paulo under Isaias Savio — the Italian-born guitarist who became one of Brazil's most important guitar teachers and performers in the mid-20th century. Savio's teaching combined rigorous classical technique with a genuine understanding of Brazilian musical culture, and this dual inheritance shaped Pereira's entire subsequent career.

After his studies with Savio, Pereira moved to Paris, where he completed a graduate degree focused on Villa-Lobos and the guitar. This Parisian period gave him access to the French academic tradition and a broader European perspective on the Brazilian music he had grown up with. Returning to Brazil, he built his reputation simultaneously as a concert guitarist and a session musician of unusual versatility.

Session Work and Brazilian Music

Back in Brazil, Pereira became a sought-after session musician, recording with some of the most important names in Brazilian popular music: Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, João Bosco, and Djavan — artists who represent the full range of Brazilian popular music from MPB to bossa nova to regional styles. This immersion in the living tradition of Brazilian popular music gave Pereira's classical guitar playing a rhythmic grounding and improvisational freedom that purely classical training rarely produces.

Competition Successes

Despite his roots in popular music, Pereira has won two of the most prestigious international classical guitar competitions: the Concurso Andrés Segovia and the Concurso Francisco Tárrega. These victories confirmed that his musical intelligence and technical command were fully equal to the demands of the classical concert tradition — a claim that his session and popular music work alone could not establish for audiences oriented toward classical performance.

Professor at UFRJ

Pereira is a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he has taught for decades. His position at one of Brazil's leading universities reflects both his academic standing and his commitment to passing on his knowledge to the next generation of Brazilian guitarists. His students have gone on to careers in both classical and popular music, demonstrating the breadth of the musical formation he offers.

As a Composer

As a composer, Pereira approaches the guitar as an instrument capable of holding together classical precision and the rhythmic looseness of jazz and Brazilian popular music within a single piece. His Ritmos Brasileiros method book is one of the most comprehensive documented studies of Brazilian rhythmic patterns adapted for the guitar — an invaluable resource for any player wanting to understand the rhythmic language of Brazilian music from the inside.

His concertos for guitar and orchestra demonstrate the breadth of his creative ambition: works that function within the formal architecture of the classical concerto while drawing their rhythmic and melodic language from the Brazilian tradition. He has also composed extensively for guitar with other instruments and for guitar duo.

At Siccas Guitars

Goran Krivokapić has performed several of Pereira's works for Siccas Guitars:

• Pixaim (Frevo) — a frevo is a fast, energetic dance form from the Carnival of Recife, northeastern Brazil; this piece captures its whirling, breathless character
• O Choro de Juliana — in the choro tradition, Brazil's earliest instrumental popular music style
• Plainte (Lamento) — a more lyrical, melancholic work demonstrating Pereira's expressive range beyond the rhythmically driven pieces

These performances are available on the Siccas Guitars YouTube channel.

Why Pereira Matters

In the classical guitar repertoire, truly Latin American voices — as opposed to Spanish composers writing in a broadly European tradition — are relatively rare at the highest technical and artistic level. Pereira's compositions come from inside the Brazilian popular tradition, composed by someone who knows that tradition not as an observer but as a practitioner. This gives his music an authenticity and rhythmic vitality that arrangements and transcriptions of Brazilian popular music by non-Brazilians rarely achieve.

For classical guitarists wanting to explore Brazilian music seriously — beyond the canonical Villa-Lobos — Pereira's compositions represent one of the most rewarding paths forward.

FAQ

Who is Marco Pereira?

A Brazilian guitarist and composer born in 1950, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He bridges classical guitar technique, jazz harmony, and the full range of Brazilian popular music in his performance and composition.

What competitions has he won?

The Concurso Andrés Segovia and the Concurso Francisco Tárrega — two of the most prestigious international classical guitar competitions.

What Brazilian musical forms appear in his music?

Choro, samba, frevo, baião, maracatu, and various other regional and popular Brazilian styles.

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