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Hermeto Pascoal


7/4

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October 29, 2004

Brazilian Jazz Master Begins U.S. Tour

By LARRY ROHTER/NYTimes

RIO DE JANEIRO - Miles Davis used to call him "that crazy albino," but the composer and versatile instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal never took offense. Here at home he was already known as "the mad genius of Brazilian popular music" and "the sorcerer," so one more gruffly affectionate nickname could only burnish his reputation as an eccentric prodigy.

Describing Mr. Pascoal's music, on the other hand, has always proved a much harder task. Though Mr. Pascoal and his quintet are scheduled to perform in the Jazz at Lincoln Center series tonight and tomorrow, the start of a rare United States tour that will continue into next month, he admits that he would feel just as comfortable playing with a symphony orchestra or at a backwoods hillbilly dance.

"I'm 68 years old, and to this day, even I have never been able to define the type of music that I play," said Mr. Pascoal, who favors the piano but is conversant in a dazzling variety of instruments, in an interview before a performance here this month. "I'm a jazz musician when I play jazz. It's part, a strong part, of my music. But it's just one of the things I do, not the only thing."

To the jazz luminaries Mr. Pascoal has worked with over the years, ranging from Davis to Ron Carter and Cannonball Adderley, it scarcely matters how his music is labeled. These days Mr. Pascoal's influence is especially strong among younger players, who search out vinyl pressings of his old albums and admire the complexity of the harmonies in his orchestral arrangements and the playful unpredictability of his compositions.

"He's one of my all-time favorite composers, and I've turned a lot of cats onto him," the trumpet player Nicholas Payton said in a telephone interview from his home in New Orleans. "He is so far ahead that it has taken this long for people to catch up with him and for him to get the exposure he deserves."

One of the things that make Mr. Pascoal so compelling, Mr. Payton added, is that "he's very contemporary, yet very rooted." As Mr. Payton put it, "he's not afraid to take chances, he's wild, he'll do anything, yet what inspires me is that even when he is at is his most abstract, you can feel those Brazilian rhythms, that connection to the core of his culture, in his music."

But increasingly, Mr. Pascoal's appeal also extends beyond the jazz world. Orchestral pieces he composed have been performed in Europe and Latin America, and the Kronos Quartet commissioned and has long played a high-energy composition of Mr. Pascoal's, "Marcando Tempo," after being impressed by one of his United States performances in the 1980's.

"I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but someone similar in American music might be Charles Ives," said the violinist David Harrington, a founder of the quartet. "Hermeto is creative in the most fundamental and invigorating kind of way, with an expansive imagination like a child's, a hugeness about his sources of inspiration and a vibrant curiosity about sound, a feeling that anywhere we are, there are sounds going on that can become part of musical experiences."

Born in the poor northeast Brazilian state of Alagoas, Mr. Pascoal was drawn to what he calls "the sacred beauty and openness of music" at an early age. But because of the visual problems associated with being an albino, he found that music teachers were unwilling to take him on as a pupil, telling him that he would not be able to read or write scores.

As a result, he had to learn to play instruments on his own and is, in his own words, "completely self-taught." He started at age 7 with the accordion, which he played at back-country dances and then, after moving to the urban hub of Recife as a teenager, on radio programs.

"We had nothing out there in the bush, not a radio or a piano or anything else, so I felt like an orphan," he recalled. "Until I was 14, I played mostly for the animals, and that experience is part of my essence."

By the start of the bossa nova era, however, Mr. Pascoal had made his way here and found work both as a player and arranger. He spent much of the 1960's in a band with the percussionist Airto Moreira, playing a mixture of samba, bossa nova and jazz.

It was around 1970, on his first trip to the United States, that Mr. Pascoal met Davis. Mr. Moreira, by then a member of the Davis group, had asked his former bandmate to write songs and arrangements for an album that he planned to record, but when Mr. Davis heard the songs that Mr. Pascoal had written, he wanted not only to go into the studio and record them with Mr. Pascoal but also have "the crazy albino" join his touring band as a pianist.

Mr. Pascoal turned down the offer to go on the road with Davis, but two of his compositions, "Igrejinha" and "Nem Um Talvez," ended up being included on Davis's groundbreaking "Live Evil" album. Originally credited to Davis, their authorship was restored to Mr. Pascoal after a long struggle, but nowadays they once again appear as Davis's compositions, which means Mr. Pascoal is no longer getting the publishing royalties on his compositions.

"That's the fault of the record company, not Miles," he said. "He and I had a very spiritual friendship, and he always looked out for me. Once he even took me to see his doctor and told him in that hoarse voice of his to 'take good care of this guy, he's a genius.' ''

Critics here and in the United States have also likened Mr. Pascoal to Frank Zappa. Both men show a fondness for triplet figures, dense orchestrations and rapidly shifting melodic lines in their work, though Mr. Pascoal, who for many years did not even own a record player, said he had never heard any of Zappa's music.

"Everybody makes that comparison, but I always take care not to listen too much to music, so as not to be influenced by others," he said. "I don't even listen to my own music that much, because if I did I would repeat myself."

Like Mr. Zappa, Mr. Pascoal is famous for his long and demanding rehearsals. Often, he requires band members to switch instruments, so that they acquire more versatility and a greater appreciation for the structure of the pieces they are playing.

"We had to learn these extremely intricate, harmonically challenging parts, so we would practice five days a week, rain or shine, for six hours a day," said Jovino Santos Neto, a Brazilian pianist who played in Mr. Pascoal's band for 15 years and now lives and works in Seattle. "He knows how to dish out the challenges to each player, a little beyond what you can do, but not so far that you can't eventually reach it."

Mr. Pascoal himself sets a high standard as an instrumentalist. He plays piano, saxophone, guitar, flute, accordion and an assortment of percussion instruments, some of which he has invented himself.

"The instrument I like most is whatever instrument I happen to be playing at the moment," he said. "But if God said you could choose only one to play, I'd take the piano, because it contains everything within it, melody, harmony and rhythm, and is the father of all instruments."

Deeply spiritual, believing that "music is prayer," Mr. Pascoal is also a prolific composer who sometimes "writes songs down on napkins" when he doesn't have sheet music at hand. In one memorable exercise, published in book form as "Calendario do Som," he wrote a song every day for a year, finishing shortly after a performance at Central Park on June 21, 1997, the last time he recalls playing in New York City.

"The key to being able to compose is never to do anything in a premeditated fashion but to give yourself up to the moment, to intuition and the energy that is out there," he said. "You don't have to believe this if you don't want, but when I'm composing, I feel other composers who have already gone to heaven approaching me," from Chopin and Mozart to Thelonious Monk and Davis.

Among musicians, stories about Mr. Pascoal's ability to discern music in everything are legion. Once, while recording the album "Slaves Mass" in the 1970's, he took a pair of pigs into the studio and "played" them as if they were bagpipes, while on another occasion he taped a radio soccer announcer narrating a goal being scored and wrote a song based on the rhythms and tone of his speech.

"Music is the expression of something that flows through Hermeto 24/7," Mr. Santos said. "Being around him is like being near a waterfall. Whether he is talking, composing or performing, something is going on all the time."

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I'd recommend the following as they feature his working band of many years:

Brasil Universo (Som da Gente 1988)

Lagoa da Canoa, Município de Arapiraca (Som da Gente 1987)

Só Nao Toca Quem Nao Quer (veraBra 1987)

and these for solo performances:

Zabumbê-bum-á (Warner Bros. 1979)

A Musica Livre de Hermeto Paschoal (EMI 1985)

I consider him one of the great avant-garde geniusses of Brazilian music, along with Moacir Santos and perhaps Egberto Gismonti.

I had the pleasure to sit in with his band on a jam session many years ago after his Frankfurt concert - I will never forget. A wild player and such a nice and humble man.

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  • 13 years later...
On 10/29/2004 at 2:12 AM, 7/4 said:

These days Mr. Pascoal's influence is especially strong among younger players, who search out vinyl pressings of his old albums and admire the complexity of the harmonies in his orchestral arrangements and the playful unpredictability of his compositions.

What are Pascoal's "old albums," and which ones are recommended?

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  • 3 years later...
On 11/5/2021 at 0:03 AM, Late said:

It's a shame that Roland Kirk wasn't around to hear this album. Pascoal and Kirk seem like cosmic relatives to me. Very much kindred spirits. 

Unlikely as it seems, there is a time window during which Kirk could have heard this record. It was released in 1973, Kirk died in 1977.

Actually I'm pondering what does Hermeto make of Rahsaan? I've never heard him mention Rahsaan in any interviews nor did he dedicate any music piece to him, afaik. And Hermeto is big on making musical dedications to other musicians, be it Miles, Cannonball, Gil Evans, Jaco, you name it. 

Edited by sambrasa
grammar
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11 minutes ago, Late said:

I'd say, if you can find the Cobblestone/Muse recording (pictured above; white cover), that's a good starting point. I don't know if that exactly qualifies as "big band" however. Also, if you don't already have it, A Música Livre de Hermeto Paschoal

Thank you

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