About

Get ready to vibe with Leo Gandelman Quartet’s smooth Brazilian jazz grooves live and up close! The exceptional musical legacy of Leo Gandelman.

Leo Gandelman is one of the most expressive artists in Brazilian culture over the last four decades. The scope and importance of his work have made a significant contribution to instrumental music, unprecedented in our history.

Saxophonist, composer, arranger and music producer, he is one of the main people responsible for spreading the instrumental genre to the general public, collaborating, since the 1990s, to popularize Brazilian jazz and other styles, both in Brazil and around the world. The prominence of his legacy led him to recently receive the title of Doctor Honoris Causa (Notorious Knowledge) from the University of Brasília.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of maestro Henrique Gandelman and pianist and teacher Saloméa Gandelman, Leo has moved between classical and popular music from an early age, crossing both boundaries, in the words of journalist and critic Luiz Paulo Sampaio.

Rare are the musicians who inhabit the threshold of a music without limits. Among the highlights of his career are his participation as a soloist in the main orchestras in Brazil and in some of the most important in the world. His most recent work took place this year, with the Amazonas Philharmonic Orchestra, in Manaus, in the “Songs of the Amazon Forest” Project. Conceived by Gandelman, the concert celebrates the cultural and ecological richness of Brazil, with works that take the audience on a sensorial and poetic journey through the largest forest in the world.

Last year, he was featured with the São Paulo Jazz Symphony Orchestra, playing pieces of his own composition, such as “Luz Azul”, “Neshama” and “Solar”. He also performed four times with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra (from 2012 to 2016), interpreting pieces from the bossa nova songbook such as "A felicidade", "Chega de Saudade" (both by Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes), "Meditação" (Tom Jobim and Newton Mendonça), "Wave" (Tom Jobim) and "Manha de Carnaval" (Antônio Maria and Luiz Bonfá). In 2019, he performed with the acclaimed Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Ligia Amadio. He was also a soloist in a concert with the Caracas Youth Orchestra, interpreting Villa-Lobos's "Fantasia", conducted by Isaac Karabtchevsky (2009). In Brazil, he performed with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (OSB) the "Concertino para Saxofone", by Radamés Gnattali, and “Fantasia” by Villa-Lobos (2012 and 2005), conducted by conductors such as Roberto Duarte and Silvio Barbato. He performed the same pieces with the OSB in memorable concerts at the Central Park Summerstage Concerts and at the Lincoln Center in New York (2001), alongside conductor Yeruham Scharovsky.