Photo courtesy of yamandu.com.br

There are grace notes in Yamandu Costa’s playing where the melody seems to lift — light, unhurried, bittersweet.  It dances, and it pulls back, until you realize that it’s not just a performance — the guitar has been having a conversation the entire time. Costa brings the conversation to Orlando this  Sunday, April 26, at First United Methodist Church of Orlando. 

The Brazilian guitarist and composer has been credited with reviving the music of the violão de sete cordas, a Brazilian seven-string classical guitar. Peers and critics regard Costa as one of the world’s best acoustic guitarists. Conductor Kurt Masur once called him “the Paganini of the guitar,” and The New York Times noted Costa’s ability to “uncover the soul of Brazilian music with his fingers.”

Watch him perform and the credentials fall away — all that’s left is the truth of it. He moves with the music, as though the man and his instrument have long since stopped being separate things. There are moments where he is so immersed that he appears to be playing from inside the composition itself. What comes out of that is physical, unpredictable, and fully alive  — a single guitarist who fills a room the way a full band would.

While the venue has been a downtown sanctuary for more than a century, the building was redesigned in 1963, and its acoustics have been regarded as among the finest in the city ever since. Even the stained glass lining the walls scatters sound in ways that wrap the room around the listener. The space is itself part of the experience.

The Orlando stop is one of several on Costa’s current U.S. tour, happening in similar spaces. Orlando’s access to music of this caliber points to what the city’s music scene is fast becoming.

Sunday, April 26, 7:30-8:45 p.m., at First United Methodist Church of Orlando, 142 E. Jackson St.

General admission tickets: $59 per person plus tax or $46 per person for groups of four or more. Limited tickets remain for $29 at www.concertsinamerica.com/yamandu-orlando/