In 1986, Sérgio and Odair officially began performing on the innovative Millennium guitar model created by American luthier Thomas Humphrey. The instrument featured an angled soundboard, allowing greater reach for the left hand and facilitating more complex passages, further expanding musical possibilities.
Playing these guitars, they recorded their first album for Nonesuch, “Sergio & Odair Assad – Latin American Music for Two Guitars”. In addition to recording works that became definitive in their trajectory—Piazzolla’s “Tango Suite” and Gnattali’s “Suíte Retratos”—Sérgio also launched himself as a composer with “Recife dos Corais,” “Valseana,” “Vitória Régia,” and “Pinote.”
Subsequent releases continued to include pieces by Sérgio, as well as works by renowned Latin American composers—such as Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti, and Alberto Ginastera, among others—and also by his daughter Clarice Assad, born in 1978, who would become one of the most important composers and performers of her generation.
The duo’s sequence of albums extended both at Nonesuch and at GHA, the Belgian label responsible for releasing the duo’s first international album, “The Debut Concert: Live in Brussels” (1983).