Though 86-year-old composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal performs regularly in his home country of Brazil, a North American tour is a rare occurrence. Last week NYC audiences had two chances to see the maestro – at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn on May 25 and Le Poisson Rouge on May 26 – if they could score a ticket. Both shows were sold out, and the LPR date was packed to the brim for the legend and his band.
A short bit of history: Le Poisson Rouge sits about ten blocks south of where Miles Davis wandered into longtime jazz haunt Bradley’s and recruited Pascoal for his Live-Evil album some 50 years ago. As explained by mutual cohort Airto Moreira in the Quebrando Tudo documentary, Pascoal was playing a residency at the venue while in town to record his own album, so when Davis asked for compositions, the unorthodox composer simply sat down at the keyboard and improvised new pieces.
Fast forward to 2023, Pascoal is back in the city and still busy writing – in his hotel room, he created hand-drawn scores that the band distributed to dedicated audience members. After the show, I saw two young fans proudly showing off sheets of music penned in his inimitable rough-hewn style.
The performance showcased Pascoal’s uncanny ability to defy space, time and genre, sounding variously like Frank Zappa at his wonkiest or Ennio Morricone in floral narrative mode or most often, like himself. Pascoal’s music draws from bird songs, Brazilian folk music and jazz fusion, incorporating a wide range of sounds from farm animals and homemade flutes and horns to sophisticated synthesizers and an endless assortment of hand percussion.
Here he mostly stuck to his Yamaha DX7 and a melodica, though he also had a tea kettle fitted with a brass mouthpiece and an animal horn at the ready. On the keyboard, Pascoal dug into extended solos, playing leads with a free hand on the pitch-shift knob. The resulting improvisations swooped and swirled between notes, often riding the space between as he segued from theme to theme.
Saxophonist Jota Pê, pianist André Marques, bassist Itibere Zwarg, drummer Ajurinã Zwarg, and percussionist Fabio Pascoal, his son, were more than up to the task of running through his lightning-fast compositions. On one featured spot, Fabio, having exhausted his assortment of cowbells – nearly a dozen by my count – played a trio of squeaky toys that made farm animal noises: a sheep, a chicken and a pig, the latter perhaps a reference to Pascoal’s use of pig sounds, live and on his 1977 record, Slaves Mass. Fabio’s blazing triangle and omnipresent whistle added layers upon layers to the soaring music.
Midway through the show, the band dropped their instruments to regale the crowd with a deceptively simple song for fife and percussion (clave and a wooden clog). A call-and-response between Pascoal and the crowd communicated the playfulness and free-flowing nature of the entire act before launching into another fusion workout.
The band got funky, swung hard, went far out into free improvisation, then pared it all down to a simple melody that the crowd could sing and clap along to. After an encore, the audience had taken up the final tune as its own, singing it as the band processed off the stage, another gift to take home.
Pascoal’s tour continues with shows in California this week, and in Europe. In NYC, the show’s presenters – Art Don’t Sleep/Jazz Is Dead and World Music Institute – are teaming up later this summer to bring another Brazilian musician, Arthur Verocai, to perform his 1972 self-titled psychedelic pop record with an orchestra, as part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on August 11. (And for anyone looking to dig further into the world of danceable/funky Brazilian music, Greg Caz, who DJed before both Pascoal shows, is an ardent local booster and regularly spins unheralded gems and deep cuts at places like Nublu and Public Records.) Check out remaining North American tour dates and a few videos from his NYC shows below.
HERMETO PASCOAL – 2023 TOUR DATES
June 2 – Santa Cruz – Kuumbwa Jazz Center
June 4 – Berkeley – UC Theatre
June 6 – Los Angeles – The Mayan Theatre