EVANSTON, Ill. — Much of the attention on the Assads, a richly talented, multi-generational musical family rooted in Brazil, has been focused in recent years on Clarice, a Grammy Award-nominated composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist.
But on Feb. 21 at Northwestern University, the spotlight shone on Clarice’s father, Sérgio, and uncle, Odair, who marked their 60th anniversary of performing together as a classical-guitar duo in 2025. The two are in the midst of what they are billing as a farewell tour, a series of cross-country concerts that began Feb. 7 in Puerto Rico, extends to the West Coast, and concludes March 14 at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
The Assads reached the peak of their popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s, when they were touring with virtuosos like violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, performing with ensembles like the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on two Grammy Award-winning, genre-blurring albums, including Songs of Joy & Peace in 2008. They have been less visible in recent years and have not been on the road together since the COVID-19 pandemic. But they are not forgotten, as the sold-out crowd at Northwestern and the immediate cheers that greeted them made clear.
While the Assads have collaborated with all manner of orchestras, vocalists, and instrumentalists, they are arguably at their best in an intimate setting like Northwestern’s ideally sized, 406-seat Galvin Recital Hall, where it is just the two of them, direct and unadorned. It is always wonderful to enjoy solo classical guitar, but hearing these two together adds a more complex and deeply satisfying level of expression that emerges from sharing the same bloodline and playing together since they were children.
Perhaps because of its centuries-old history, worldwide reach, and essential place in the music of everyone from Renaissance troubadours to heavy-metal rock bands, the guitar has a distinctively transporting and transcendent quality that could be heard immediately in the opening selection, a pair of Astor Piazzola’s tangos, “Bandoneón” and “Zita.” Sometimes performances of Piazzolla’s music, especially those without the bandoneón, which is so integral to the tango sound, can come off as overly refined or restrained. But not this one.
Within seconds of the opening bars of “Bandoneón,” the longer and more involved of the two tangos, listeners were carried away to an alluring, dark-lit Buenos Aires club. In the Assads’ soulful, intoxicating take, the essential elements of Piazzolla’s music were abundantly present — mystery, earthiness, and sensuality.
At the same, the two instruments often sounded like more, with the Assads using an abundant mix of sharp strums, sustained vibrato, and an extraordinary range of percussive taps and thumps on the strings and body of their instruments to achieve the many moods and flavors of this music.
The brothers have performed music from across the world. But perhaps on a valedictory program like this, it was not surprising that nearly all of the pieces were from Brazil, the country where the two grew up and were shaped as musicians.
One of the most memorable of these was the evening’s second offering, “Abismo de Rosas” (Abyss of Roses), by Américo Jacomino, known as “Canhoto” (left-handed one), a famous early 20th-century guitarist who was a key exponent of the Violão Brasileiro tradition, which combined European harmony, African rhythms, and indigenous influences. The work is written in the form of a waltz, and the Assads preserved the essential metrical quality even as they applied interpretative freedom, a kind of rubato feeling, stretching and rounding certain phrasing for maximum emotional and expressive effect.
Sérgio provided a hint about why the Assads are giving up touring together when he mentioned twice in his introductions how tiring the traveling has been on this final tour. What is clear is that the Assads aren’t stopping because of any lost technique. That point was driven home in “Baião Malandro,” the second of two selections by Egberto Gismonti, a Brazilian guitarist and composer who studied with the noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Sérgio promised in his introduction that listeners would have a hard time figuring out which guitarist was playing which 16th notes, and he was right.
Sérgio is an important arranger and composer with a long resume in both pursuits, and, though there was no indication in the program, it’s probable that he did the arrangements for nearly all of the selections, most of which were written for other instrumentations than two guitars. The program also included three of his original works, which only makes sense considering that his music has always had a strong presence on the Assads’ concerts. The two ended the first half with his “One Week in Rio” (2016), a fun, lively work that features short, variegated sections representing different parts of the city — one for each day.
Two more of Sérgio’s works were on the second half, including a tribute to Tunisian-born French guitarist Roland Dyens (1955-2016) titled Dyens en trois temps (2021). Dyens was well known for his improvisations, and the first two of the three sections of this work have an improvisatory feel, with Sérgio bringing together snatches of jazz standards in the first, “Roland au nord,” and bits of French songs in the second, “La chanson et Roland,” to which the duo brought a befittingly seductive, unhurried feel. Rounding out Sérgio’s composition and capping the program was “Tahhiyya li Ossoulina,” which won a 2008 Latin Grammy Award for best classical contemporary composition. Relaxed and propulsive, percussive and calm, mysterious and transparent, this flamenco-tinged work was a perfect closer because it encapsulates the breadth of his writing and stunningly shows off the multiple dimensions of the two guitarists’ playing.
The Assads took their technical showmanship to an even higher level in the evening’s encore, “Apanhei-te, cavaquinho” (Caught You, Cavaquinho), a popular 1914 polka originally written for piano by Ernesto Nazareth. After playing together at the beginning, Sérgio stopped, as if he were going to let Odair take it from there, but instead he walked up behind his brother, bent over him, and began to play Odair’s guitar at the same time. It was an impressive bit of bravura, but as technically flashy as their performance was here and elsewhere, it is never just about the flash with these two. It’s always about having something to say that is meaningful and lasting.
