In fact, the land that inspires this 27-year old virtuoso is the remote, rural region of southern Brazil, where Costa was born, and northern Argentina. “The music I do is a mixture between Brazilian and Latin American music,” he says. “I try to unite these two separate cultures. I’ve always loved roots music, not necessarily folk, but roots, from southern Brazil and Argentina especially.”

Costa’s musical heroes include Django Reinhardt, Cuba’s Baden Powell, and Argentine tango icon Astor Piazzolla, as well as Antonio Carlos Jobim and Lucio Yanel, both Argentines who made their careers in Brazil.  Costa adores jazz and classical music, but when it comes to performance repertoire, he composes much of it himself, and favors what he calls “gaucho” rhythms. “I like milongas, which are similar to tango, but less urban. Gaucho music reflects the sentiments of those vast places, the plains or pampas. It’s sensitive, maybe sentimental, but it’s also very strong music. It speaks about the people, and their rhythms.”

It is those bracing rhythms that set Costa’s sound apart from that of other great Brazilian guitarists. “Brazilians like to be happy,” says Costa. “They are always celebrating. These rhythms are denser, reflective, and even a little sad. They are difficult for the ear if you are not accustomed to them.” Costa reaches for his 7-string guitar and performs a short, staggering piece from northeast Argentina in a 12/8 rhythm he calls chamamé. He uses a brilliantly loose adaptation of classical guitar technique, switching between picking and finger strumming, muting, snapping, and even tapping to create rhythmic effects, but always preserving an easy, organic flow. “I developed my own manner of playing,” says Costa. “I listened to the music, but I found it difficult to play it as it was, so I started looking for new techniques.”

Costa has just completed his ninth CD. He made his debut in a duo recording with Yanel in 1999, and has since recorded in at least three different countries and performed in many more, including with an orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur. Costa’s most readily available recording is 2007’s Ida e Volta [GHA], an excellent introduction, as it includes solo performances as well as work with his trio—guitar, double bass, and violin. These 12 tracks span a dizzying array of rhythms. “Brazil is like a whole continent,” says Costa, “a big continent. It might seem to you that these rhythms and styles are very close but, in fact, they remain far apart. What I really want to do is show the world a unified Latin American music, but we are really only at the beginning of promoting such a music.”