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Hermeto Pascoal

Hermeto Pascoal is a prolific musician and composer whotranscends category. Hermeto often uses unconventionalinstruments such as teapots, children's toys, found objects,and—sometimes, without harming them—live animals. Heuses nature as a basis for his compositions, as in hisMúsica da Lagoa, where the musicians burblewater and play flutes while immersed in a lagoon. He is anenergetic and virtuosic soloist who can play proficiently onalmost any instrument: keyboards, button accordion,saxophone, guitar, flute, voice, various brass instruments,and various folkloric instruments. A Brazilian televisionbroadcast from 1999 showed him soloing at one point bysinging into a cup with his mouth partially submerged inwater.

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

He initially came to the international public's attentionthrough an appearance on Miles Davis' 1971 albumLive/Evil, which featured Pascoal on severalstudio pieces (which he also composed). Davis has saidthat Pascoal was "the most impressive musician in theworld". Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilianmusicians Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. From the late1970s on he has mostly led his own groups, playing at manyprestigious venues, such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in1979.

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

Remembering Hermeto Pascoal: The Sorcerer's Spell

by Ian Patterson
September 16, 2025

Hermeto Pascoal, the one-of-a-kind Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and composer, has gone to the great gig in the sky. Known affectionately as Bruxo (Sorcerer), Pascoal passed away on September 13, 2025. He was 89. Few musicians have traversed as many styles of Brazilian music as Pascoal. His first commercial recording, in 1956, was with Clóvis Pereira--the renowned composer of folkloric, choral and orchestral works; Pascoal plays sanfona (button accordion) on two tracks. Over the next 65 years, Pascoal contributed to ...

Play This!

Hermeto Pascoal: Gaio da Roseira

by Ian Patterson
September 16, 2025

Hermeto Pascoal (June 22, 1936--September 13, 2025), the internationally renowned Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and composer, spent sixty years seamlessly fusing Brazilian music with jazz. From the album A música livre de Hermeto Pascoal (Sinter, 1973) the 14-minute track “Gaio da Roseira" captures the vocal lyricism, percussive colors, dancing rhythms, melodic lilt and avant-garde eclecticism that were some of the hallmarks of his music. In the music's most outré passages it is hard to believe that loops and effects are entirely absent. ...

Album Review

Cal Tjader: Amazonas

Read "Amazonas" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
August 12, 2025

Multi-instrumentalist Cal Tjader has been gone for over forty years. Had he lived, he would be in his nineties today. The West Coast scene he entered, first as a drummer, then as a vibraphonist, was a world of clubs, acoustic bands, and enthusiastic promoters who pushed their favorite artists' careers. For Tjader, it was San Francisco, the Blackhawk, and jazz writer Ralph Gleason. Tjader broke in playing with Dave Brubeck in 1948. He was continuously employed until his premature death ...

Radio & Podcasts

Jazz In Brazil: the legendary composers and musicians

by Larry Slater
March 14, 2025

Though Bossa Nova, and the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, are Brazil's most recognized musical export, Brazil hosts a vast number of musical styles with musicians garnering international followings. One of the most unique, and influential is the composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, who defies categorization. Moacir Santos is revered today as a giant of Brazilian music, but he struggled for recognition throughout his life. The singer and songwriter Milton Nascimento is a globally recognized icon, whose unique ...

Album Review

Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo: Pra você, Ilza

Read "Pra você, Ilza" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
June 24, 2024

During her final year on the planet, Hermeto Pascoal filled a notebook with chorinhos and other musical offerings to Ilza da Silva Pascoal, his wife of 46 years (1954-2000). Twenty-four years after her death, the Brazilian sorcerer of universal music presents 13 songs from his Ilza notebook in the form of the recording Pra Você, Ilza. In the album notes, he writes of her in the present tense: “Our love, our spirit, our soul remains together. Everything keeps unfolding."

In Pictures

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, ...