— What made you become a musician?
— I started learning how to play the guitar when I was 9 years old, and my first inspiration was the band that played at the Church. I would go with my mother and would sit in the front row just paying attention on the guitar. We used to have a classical guitar at home, even though nobody played it, then I just grabbed the chance and asked my mother to get me a guitar teacher and that is how it all started.
— Why did you choose jazz at the end?
— As a guitarist, I had an uncommon beginning. Even though I always liked distorted guitars, the rhythm would strike me the most and I grew up listening to artists like Michael Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire and some Brazilian Music like Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, among others. Fusion came when I was 15 years old and that was heaven to me, because I could find a way to put the distorted guitar with some great groove, after a while I started to listen to some jazz like Sonny Rollins Miles Davis, Coltrane, and well, that style showed me that you can be free with music. There are rules, but you can take different directions and be yourself, and that is very important for a jazz player, to have his/her own identity.
— Have you ever thought about changing style or instrument?
— During all these 20 years playing guitar I had the opportunity to play different genres and I am still able to do that, so I have my own style, but I can navigate through different sorts of music and find the appropriate way to suit the music. So, lately I have been playing a lot of jazz, funk and hip hop, but for me it is all music, no need to really change styles, they are connected!
— What place, to your mind, does jazz occupy on the world music stage now?
— Jazz is a very wide word for the musical scene nowadays and it has its own way in every different culture but with the same basis as the American Jazz. I think it is amazing to have all this mix of cultures in order to create something new. Copying John Coltrane is a good way to learn the language, but it is important to go beyond that and that is how Jazz happens nowadays and I find so amazing that people are trying more and more to integrate different cultures to it.