As tribute to another celebrated musician who left us earlier this week. Music by Brazilian Jazz legend Hermeto Pacoal, recorded at the 1991 Outsidein Festival in Crawley, UK and preserved for posterity by BBC Radio 3 on August 31, 1991.
Pascoal initially caught the international public’s attention with an appearance on Miles Davis’s 1971 album Live-Evil, which featured him on three pieces, which he also composed. Davis allegedly called Pascoal “the most impressive musician in the world”.[8] Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. From the late 1970s onward, he has mostly led his own groups, playing at many prestigious venues, such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979. Other members of the group have included bassist Itibere Zwarg, pianist Jovino Santos-Neto and percussionists Nene, Pernambuco, and Zabelê.
Known as o Bruxo (the Sorcerer), Pascoal often made music with unconventional objects such as teapots, children’s toys, and animals, as well as keyboards, button accordions, melodica, saxophones, guitars, flutes, voices, various brass and folkloric instruments. He used nature as a basis for his compositions, as in his Música da Lagoa, in which the musicians burble water and play glass bottles and flutes while immersed in a lagoon: a Brazilian television broadcast from 1999 showed him soloing at one point by singing into a cup with his mouth partially submerged in water. Folk music from rural Brazil is another important influence in his work.
Between 1996 and 1997, Pascoal worked on a book project called Calendário do Som, which contains a song for every day of the year, including February 29, so that everyone would have a song for their birthday.
He later returned to the Jabour neighborhood in Bangu, Rio de Janeiro, where he spent much of his time composing, rehearsing and hosting musicians from all over the world.
In 2019, his album Hermeto Pascoal e Sua Visão Original do Forró won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Portuguese Language Roots Album.
Pascoal died from multiple organ failure in Rio de Janeiro, on September 13, 2025, at the age of 89.
Celebrate his gift with this performance from 1991.
