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Hermeto Pascoal

Hermeto Pascoal is a prolific musician and composer who transcends category. Hermeto often uses unconventional instruments such as teapots, children's toys, found objects, and—sometimes, without harming them—live animals. He uses nature as a basis for his compositions, as in his Música da Lagoa, where the musicians burble water and play flutes while immersed in a lagoon. He is an energetic and virtuosic soloist who can play proficiently on almost any instrument: keyboards, button accordion, saxophone, guitar, flute, voice, various brass instruments, and various folkloric instruments. A Brazilian television broadcast from 1999 showed him soloing at one point by singing into a cup with his mouth partially submerged in water.

Hermeto's career began in 1964 with appearances on several Brazilian recordings with relatively small groups. These now-classic albums and the musicians involved (Edu Lobo, Airto Moreira, Elis Regina, César Camargo Mariano and others) established widely influential new directions in post-bossa Brazilian Jazz.

He initially came to the international public's attention through an appearance on Miles Davis' 1971 album Live/Evil, which featured Pascoal on several studio pieces (which he also composed). Davis has said that Pascoal was "the most impressive musician in the world". Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. From the late 1970s on he has mostly led his own groups, playing at many prestigious venues, such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979.

Hermeto is a prolific composer, famous for his project Calendario do Som, in which he composed a song every day for a year so that everyone would have a song for his or her birthday.

Hermeto Pascoal At UC Theatre

by Walter Atkins
June 23, 2023

Jazz is Dead (Jazz Está Morto) presented Brazilian multi instrumentalist and composer Hermeto Pascoal (Miles Davis, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Donald Byrd) at Berkeley's beautifully renovated UC Theatre on University Avenue. On this six city tour, his loyal followers were in full force for an evening of eclectic music. San Francisco-based Jazz Mafia enthusiastically warmed up the overflowing crowd. Considered a living legend in his home country, Pascoal treated the standing room only audience to his unique blend ...

Album Review

Dan Costa: Beams

by Craig Arthur
February 19, 2023

UK-born pianist Dan Costa plays and composes in the impressionistic tradition of Bill Evans, acoustic Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea or Marcin Wasilewski. It is a style that lends itself well to the alchemy of turning light into music, music into light. And his subject matter of choice on Beams, like that of an impressionist painter, is indeed light. He describes the album as “a celebration of light in some key physical and metaphysical forms." Light is like water, ...

Album Review

Hermeto Pascoal: Planetario Da Gavea

Read "Planetario Da Gavea" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 10, 2022

Planetario Da Gavea is an enormous, sprawling document from a February 1981 outdoor performance series by Brazilian jazz wizard Hermeto Pascoal recorded under the stars in the Gávea neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, within the dome of the city's outdoor planetário (planetarium). Ten pieces, most never recorded before and several never performed again, stretch across two hours of gloriously inspired, indulgent sound featuring the composer, instrumentalist, and sorcerer who Miles Davis once famously called “one of the most ...

From the Inside Out

Demons and Wizards, June Bugs and Jakarta

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 29, 2022

Hermeto Pascoal Planetario Da Gavea Far Out Recordings 2022 Planetario Da Gavea is an enormous, sprawling document from a February 1981 outdoor performance series by Brazilian jazz wizard Hermeto Pascoal recorded under the stars in the Gávea neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, within the dome of the city's outdoor planetário (planetarium). Ten pieces, most never recorded before and several never performed again, stretch across two hours of gloriously ...

Radio & Podcasts

Hermeto Pascoal, Somi, Leo Genovese, Melissa Aldana & More New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
April 23, 2022

Somi's tribute to Miriam Makeba and a previously unreleased wild live recording by Hermeto Pascoal bookend an episode replete with beautiful new albums, with a special focus on Latin America, Caribbean and European artists.Happy listening!PlaylistBen Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Somi “House of the Rising Sun" Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba (Salon Africana) 0:16 Host talks 4:00 Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita “Kharit" Suba (bendigedig) 5:00 Host talks 9:52 Yilian ...

Live Review

A Quarry Concert in Italy

by Francesco Martinelli
August 8, 2019

Rossano Emili / Fat Fingers Saxophone Quartet Hermetica at Marble Quarry Vagli, Italy August 3, 2019 Summer in Tuscany is full of concerts in interesting, sometimes unique places. In fact, a variety of acoustic musics like jazz, chamber and folk have proven an invaluable tool to revitalize historical buildings, ruined chapels, man-made marvels of architecture. More complex and nuanced is the relationship with nature. A lake, a park, a wooded mountain can ...

Album Review

Hermeto Pascoal: No Mundo Dos Sons

Read "No Mundo Dos Sons" reviewed by Harry S. Pariser

by Harry S. Pariser
October 12, 2017

The packaging for the two-CD set from Brazil's Hermeto Pascoal, an 81-year-old multi-instrumentalist, shines of its own accord. Its trifold paper cover, unfolds like a lotus to reveal two CDs and a sleeve containing a large fold-out glossy paper. The insert unfolds to read “Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo," along with the title No Mundo Dos Sons. The reverse side has the details of each track in Portuguese. Homage is paid, in terms of song titles (a type of “shout out"), ...