Hermeto Pascoal

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Hermeto Pascoal at the Rudolstadt Festival 2016
Hermeto Pascoal - Portrait by Gert Chesi, 80s

Hermeto Pascoal (born June 22, 1936 in Lagoa da Canoa , Alagoas ) is one of the most famous multi-instrumentalists and avant-garde musicians in Brazil today . He is considered a Brazilian "jazz luminary "; "With its combination of melodic fantasy, free jazz and complex Brazilian rhythms, of sophisticated orchestration and free development in open rehearsals", Pascoal has made a more decisive contribution to the development of contemporary rhythmic music with improvisational elements than many composers and arrangers from the immediate jazz circle. Karl Lippegauseven called him on the occasion of his 75th birthday "Brazil's answer to Sun Ra ."

Live and act

Hermeto Pascoal is albino and an extraordinary figure in terms of his appearance as well as his musical expression. He plays a number of instruments such as the accordion , saxophone , flute , guitar, as well as various percussion instruments and keyboard instruments . In Brazil he is called "O Bruxo" (the magician, the sorcerer), "because he can make music with everything that surrounds him". In addition, his modernization of choro music in the late 1960s gave Brazilian music “important impulses and inspired artists like Laurindo Almeida ”.

Hermeto Pascoal made his first musical experiences at the age of 10 with the instruments accordion and flute . First stage appearances followed together with his older brother José Neto . In 1950 the family moved to Recife and there they played the accordion together on local radio stations.

Only a little later Hermeto Pascoal began to undertake his first musical experiments in search of new sounds and to learn every instrument he could get his hands on. Pascoal is self-taught and mixes many different styles such as the music of Brazil , jazz or new music and always comes up with surprising results. One of his projects is his Calendário do som , a project, a musical diary so to speak, on which he composed a new piece every day for a year.

In the 1960s he worked in Rio de Janeiro in his bossa nova group and with Sérgio Mendes and Antônio Carlos Jobim . In 1964 he founded the Trio Sambrasa ; Airto Moreira became his most important partner there, with whom he also played in the Quartetto Novo . In the following years he began working with musicians such as Edu Lobo , Miles Davis , or Elis Regina for many years , which made him known in many countries. It wasn't until 1972 that his first album was released under his own name, which was quickly followed by other albums. His album A Música Livre de Hermeto Paschoal (1973), released during the military dictatorship , became an album of the Brazilian counterculture. On the album Slave Mass he used live pigs, which he pulled by the tail, as percussion instruments. He recorded the album Eu E Eles (1999) single-handedly with dozens of different instruments.

Pascoal works with a permanent group. The rehearsal work with her - part of his process-based understanding of composition - takes place daily; For many years he lived with his ensemble in a commune.

Selection discography

Publishing year title Artist / lineup
1965 Em Som Maior Sambrasa Trio (Hermeto Pascoal, Humberto Clayber, Airto Moreira )
1967 Quarteto Novo Quarteto Novo (Airto, Hermeto, Theo, Heraldo)
1970 Live evil Miles Davis with Jack DeJohnette , Keith Jarrett , Airo Moreira and others
1971 Hermeto
1973 A Música Livre de Hermeto Paschoal
1974 It could only happen with you Duke Pearson
1977 Slaves mass with Ron Carter , Airto Moreira , Flora Purim , Raul de Souza , Chester Thompson , Alphonso Johnson , David Amaro
1979 Ao Vivo Montreux Jazz with Itiberê Zwarg , Cacau, Nenê , Nivaldo Ornelas, Jovino Santos Neto, Pernambuco, Zabele
1980 Cérebro Magnético with Itiberê Zwarg, Jovino Santos Neto, Alfredo Dias Gomes
1992 Festa dos Deuses Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo
1999 Eu e Eles Hermeto Pascoal
2003 Mundo Verde Esperança
2006 Chimarrão com Rapadura with Aline Morena
2017 Viajando Com O Som (The Lost '76 Vice-Versa Studio Session) Recordings from 1976

Musical reception

His compositions have also been performed by the Copenhagen Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic , the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and the Youth Symphony São Paulo. In 2009 the hr big band released the CD Viva o som! recorded with compositions by Hermeto Pascoal; their arrangements come from the saxophonist Steffen Schorn .

Lexigraphic entries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jazzzeitung 1/2011: “Brasilianischer Musikkosmos”, Nuremberg University of Music: An interview with Steffen Schorn
  2. ↑ a b Martin Kunzler: Jazz-Lexikon vol. 2. Reinbek 2002
  3. ↑ a b "O Bruxo" - The sorcerer of sounds: Portrait of the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal. WDR 3 , June 22, 2011
  4. ↑ Three pieces are by Pascoal, who can only be heard as singer and percussionist on these recordings.

Web links

Commons : Hermeto Pascoal  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Pascoal, Hermeto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian musician
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Lagoa da Canoa , Alagoas