Hermeto Pascoal

Hermeto Pascoal stands among the world's most celebrated Brazilian figures as a composer, arranger, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist. Beyond standard instruments he draws upon tea cups, wood, and hundreds of found objects as sound sources. His output merges nearly every Brazilian folk tradition with jazz, classical, funk, and MPB. Albino and crowned by a voluminous shock of white hair, he receives the respectful nickname "Bruxo," or "sorcerer." He participated in Airto Moreira's storied Quarteto Novo during 1967, after which Moreira and Flora Purim served as co-producers on the 1971 debut album Hermeto. Pascoal further contributed to Miles Davis' Live Evil. The decade's landmark trilogy comprises the 1977 release Slaves Mass, 1979's Zabumbê-bum-á, and 1980's Cérebro Magnético. He independently issued the self-titled debut by Hermeto Pascoal & Su Grupo together with the pivotal Brasil Universo in 1986. Both 2006's Chimarrão com Rapadura and 2010's Bodas de Latão involved vocalist Aline Morena. In 2016 he joined England's Far Out roster, which delivered the previously unheard 1976 studio date Viajando Com O Som the following year. Hermeto Pascoal E Sua Visão Original Do Forró, another archival recording, appeared on Brazil's Scubidu Music. A previously unreleased 1981 performance by E Grupo and a thoroughly remastered edition of the 1971 album Hermeto both surfaced in 2022.

Born in 1936 in the northeastern Brazilian hamlet of Lagoa da Canoa, Pascoal received his first flute instruction at age eight. Three years later he took up his father's eight-button sanfona. After only three months of practice the elder musician withdrew from local parties, unwilling to share the stage with a son who had already surpassed him. At his grandfather's blacksmith shop the boy fashioned music by striking pieces of iron. He soon led bands at dances and forrós throughout the Arapiraca region. When the family relocated to Recife in 1950, he and his keyboardist brother Jovino José Dos Santos Neto began earning income through radio broadcasts. Pascoal then pursued mastery of every instrument he encountered, ultimately commanding piano, bass, reeds, winds, and numerous percussion and stringed instruments alike.

He settled in Rio during 1958 and worked with the Regional de Pernambuco do Pandeiro, the Fafá Lemos Group, and Orquestra do Copinha. Three years later he moved to São Paulo, performing nightly in several clubs. Already proficient on brass and woodwinds, he formed Som Quatro and later joined Sivuca in the accordion trio O Mundo em Chamas. His compositional method privileges individual tones over chord progressions, scales, or modes. He came to regard music as an elemental natural force arising from all earthly matter, an outlook aesthetically akin to Johannes Kepler's music of the spheres.

Although he had recorded as early as 1958 alongside Edu Lobo, Elis Regina, and Cesar Camargo, the short-lived Sambrasa Trio—featuring Pascoal on piano, drummer Airto Moreira, and bassist Humberto Clayber—first elevated him to prominence. In 1966 he entered Moreira's forward-looking bossa ensemble Trio Novo alongside guitarists Heraldo do Monte and Théo de Barros. Rechristened Quarteto Novo, the group fashioned progressive reinterpretations of northeastern forms such as baixo and xaxado, rendered in 4/4 time with contemporary harmonies. Their self-titled 1967 album achieved commercial success, garnered multiple Brazilian awards, and propelled both Pascoal and Moreira onto the international stage. In 1969 Pascoal appeared on the sole album by Brazilian progressive jazz collective Brazilian Octopus and supplied compositions to Antonio Carlos Jobim's Tide and the subsequent Stone Flower.

Moreira and his spouse, vocalist and composer Flora Purim, summoned Pascoal to New York in 1970 for sessions on the percussionist's debut solo effort, Natural Feelings. The couple then secured him a Cobblestone contract and co-produced the 1971 album Hermeto, whose personnel included Gil Evans, Thad Jones, Hubert Laws, Ron Carter, and Garnett Brown. Pascoal also furnished two pieces—"Little Church" and "Nem Um Talvez"—plus instrumental performances for Miles Davis' Live Evil. Davis had selected eleven of Pascoal's works, yet the Brazilian retained most for his own project. Although initially credited solely to Davis, the composer attributed the discrepancy to a label oversight rather than the trumpeter. During an interview Davis described Pascoal as "the most important musician on the planet."

Acclaim followed both his live improvisations and his singular compositions. He joined Donald Byrd on Electric Byrd and Airto Moreira on Seeds on the Ground, both issued in 1971. A 1973 U.S. and Mexico tour preceded the Brazilian recording A Música Livre de Hermeto for Sinter, later acquired and reissued by Fontana. The Association of Critics of São Paulo named him Best Soloist. Returning to the U.S. in 1974, he earned the Best Arrangement Award at the Globo Network's Festival Abertura for "Porco na Festa." In 1976 he appeared on Cal Tjader's Amazonas (produced by Moreira), Flora Purim's Open Your Eyes You Can Fly, and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 77's Home Cooking.

Slaves Mass, released by Warner Bros. in 1977 and recorded in Los Angeles, secured his historical standing. Co-produced by Moreira and Purim, the album assembled leading Brazilian jazz musicians with North American contributors including Alphonso Johnson, Raul De Souza, Ron Carter, David Amaro, and Chester Thompson. Its intricate, multi-layered compositions and inspired performances drew worldwide praise; Pascoal himself played flute, guitar, melodica, soprano saxophone, and organ. Later that year he rejoined Purim for Encounter. Following extensive international touring, Atlantic issued the live Ao Vivo Montreux Jazz in 1979 and the studio album Zabumbê-bum-á, captured the prior year with the same ensemble and featuring guest vocals by his parents. The warmly expansive free-jazz statement Cérebro Magnético arrived in 1980, showcasing more than a dozen instruments by Pascoal and contributions from pianist Jovino Santos Neto and bassist Itiberé Luiz Zwarg.

In early 1981 Pascoal formed the supergroup Hermeto Pascoal & Su Grupo, comprising Zwarg, Neto, guitarist Heraldo Do Monte, saxophonist and flutist Carlos Malta, and percussionists Marcio Bahia and Pernambuco. The unit rehearsed nine hours daily, seven days a week, performed numerous free concerts in Rio, and cultivated a devoted local audience. Its self-titled debut appeared on Som Da Gente in 1982 to domestic acclaim, though international touring remained limited. The 1984 follow-up Lagoa Da Canoa Municipio de Arapiraca paid tribute to the leader's birthplace. Brasil Universo charted inside Brazil's Top 15 in 1986, while 1987's jazz-funk classic Só Não Toca Quem Não Quer reached the Top Five. The solo-piano outing Por Diferentes Caminhos earned global recognition in 1988.

Pascoal participated in Robertinho Silva's 1989 hit Bodas De Prata and undertook extensive arranging and composing projects into the ensuing decade. He also recorded with Maria Bethania, Purim, Elis Regina, and Vera Figueiredo. The final Hermeto Pascoal & Su Grupo album, Festa Dos Deuses, emerged on Phillips in 1992. That year Pascoal appeared as co-billed guest on the Daniel Guggenheim Group's Strange Beauty and contributed to Sergio Mendes' Brasileiro. Further collaborations included Mendes' Oceano and Joyce Moreno's Ilha Brasil in 1996; he received the Prêmio Sharp as Best Arranger for Duo Fel's Kids of Brazil and the Prêmio Ary Barroso the same year. In 1999 he released the all-instrument solo album Eu E Eles.

Solos do Brasil, a 2000 collaboration with guitarist Sebastião Tapajós and pianist Gilson Peranzzetta, preceded an April U.S. tour. Reviewing one performance, The Boston Globe observed: "With equal parts virtuosity and eccentricity, Pascoal's sextet gave the rare example of a band that actually earned its standing ovation." Pascoal subsequently oversaw catalog reissues, among them a 2002 official remastered edition of Mundo Verde Esperança containing alternate tracks and a revised mix. He featured on Mike Marshall and Jovino Santos Neto's 2003 project Serenata: The Music of Hermeto Pascoal. The first of two albums with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Aline Morena, Chimarrão Com Rapadura, appeared in 2006; the second, Bodas de Latão, followed in 2010. While serving as artist-in-residence at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music he recorded 2013's The Monash Sessions. He later relocated from Curitiba, Paraná, back to Rio's Jabour neighborhood in Bangu.

The double-length No Mundo Dos Sons, issued in 2017 and the first recording in fifteen years to reunite O Grupo, received universal acclaim. Pascoal also entered an agreement with England's Far Out label to release archival material and supervise catalog reissues. That November the label's 200th release, Viajando Com O Som (The Lost '76 Vice Versa Studio Session), documented a 1976 date whose participants included drummer Zé Eduardo Nazario, bassist Zeca Assumpção, electric pianist Lelo Nazario, saxophonists Mauro Senise, Raul Mascarenhas, and Nivaldo Ornelas, guitarist Toninho Horta, and vocalist Aleuda Chaves. The sessions captured an almost spiritual rapport first achieved onstage at Teatro Bandeirantes. Engineer Renato Viola preserved nearly every first take; Nazario retained a first-generation copy that remained in storage for more than four decades after the master was lost. Critics greeted the recording with uniform enthusiasm.

In 2018 Pascoal appeared as co-billed guest on Itiberé Zwarg's Universal Music Orchestra and on Sean Khan's charting Palmares Fantasy and Maria Toro's Araras. Brazil's Scubidu Music released the previously unheard Hermeto Pascoal E Sua Visão Original Do Forró in 2019, an archival one-day session from 1999 featuring vocalists Marina Elali, João Claudio Moreno, and Alceu Valença alongside musicians who later joined Su Grupo. The set highlighted Pascoal's affection for forró refracted through a jazz lens. Far Out issued the archival live recording Planetário Da Gávea in March 2022, documenting an early Su Grupo performance, and followed it in May with a deluxe remastered reissue of the 1971 album Hermeto.