Fabiano do Nascimento

The music that nylon-stringed guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento makes is paradoxically sumptuous and restrained, like a single perfect kiss whose feeling lingers long after it is over. do Nascimento grew up playing piano in Brazil, part of an extended musical lineage that includes blind saxophone virtuoso Ladario Teixeira and two uncles deeply invested in Brazilian music’s past and present. In fact, it was one of those uncles who, while sharing a home with do Nascimento and his grandmother, first taught the kid a little guitar, setting him on the path to eventually leave school and focus solely on his strings. After moving to Los Angeles for family as a teenager, he steadily became a session player, working for the likes of Mia Doi Todd and Aloe Blacc.

But it is do Nascimento’s solo career, which began in 2015 when he was well into his 30s, that brings him to Big Ears. Actually, solo is something of a misnomer, since do Nascimento moves so fluidly between collaborators, from his sublime 2024 partnership with Sam Gendel called The Room to his coruscant work with electronics explorer E Ruscha V on 2026’s Aquáticos. Nascimento shifts among six-, seven-, eight-, and 10-string guitars, sometimes even playing a soprano version and often altering the tuning. His playing is pensive but not distant, as if he’s inviting you to sit a spell and consider a blessed moment of peace or a curious little idea. On 2025’s Cavejaz, the collaboration-rich apogee of his career so far, he joined tabla master U-zhaan for several tracks, including one called “Tranquilo.” For those two perfect minutes, it seemed that they were wordlessly contemplating the ocean’s mysteries and miracles, the way the surface can shimmer so beautifully above something we may never fully know. Serene but active but also never busy, do Nascimento’s music is like a prompt for wondering about our world.