Hermeto Pascoal (22 June 1936 – 13 September 2025) was a Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist.[1] Pascoal was best known inBrazilian music for his orchestration and improvisation, as well as for being arecord producer and contributor to many Brazilian and international albums.
Pascoal was born on 22 June 1936 inOlho d'Água das Flores in Northeastern Brazil, in an area that lacked electricity at the time he was born. He learned the accordion from his father and practiced for hours indoors, as, being born withalbinism, he was incapable of working in the countryside with the rest of his family.[2][3] As a child, Pascoal idolisedbaião accordionistLuiz Gonzaga, and he inspired both Pascoal and his brother, José Neto, to pursue music.[4]
From an early age, Pascoal played thebutton accordion.[5][6][7] At age seven, he started with the flute.[8] Pascoal was a self-taught child prodigy. When he was eleven, he started performing in musical groups with his brother and father. He and his family moved betweenRecife and Caruaru several times. Pascoal starting playing in some groups there that would start getting radio time.[5][6][7][9] With his brother andSivuca, who both also had albinism, he formed an accordion trio called O Mundo em Chamas for a short time.[9]
Pascoal taught himself piano, woodwind and percussion instruments.[9] At the end of the 1950s, Pascoal had moved to the south of the country and eked out a living as a musician in Rio and São Paulo.[9] In 1960, he picked up the saxophone and created the group Som Quatro.[5][6][7]
Pascoal initially caught the international public's attention with an appearance onMiles Davis's 1971 albumLive-Evil, which featured him on three pieces, which he also composed.[3] Davis allegedly called Pascoal "the most impressive musician in the world".[13] Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto Moreira andFlora Purim. From the late 1970s onward, he has mostly led his own groups, playing at many prestigious venues, such as theMontreux Jazz Festival in 1979. Other members of the group have included bassist Itibere Zwarg, pianistJovino Santos-Neto and percussionists Nene, Pernambuco, andZabelê.[11]
Between 1996 and 1997, Pascoal worked on a book project calledCalendário do Som, which contains a song for every day of the year, including 29 February, so that everyone would have a song for their birthday.[3]
He later returned to the Jabour neighborhood inBangu, Rio de Janeiro, where he spent much of his time composing, rehearsing and hosting musicians from all over the world.[14]
Pascoal was married to Ilza da Silva, to whom he dedicated many compositions, from 1954 until her death in 2000. They had six children, Jorge, Fábio, Flávia, Fátima, Fabiula, and Flávio, and many grandchildren. Hermeto was later married to Aline Morena from 2003 until 2016, while living inCuritiba, Paraná, Brazil.[16][17][14][18]
Pascoal died from multiple organ failure in Rio de Janeiro, on 13 September 2025, at the age of 89.[19][20]
Pascoal was a multi-instrumentalist who would switch between instruments in performance.[21] Known aso Bruxo (the Sorcerer), he 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.[22][3][23] He used nature as a basis for his compositions, as in hisMúsica 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.[3]
^MacGowan, Chris; MacGowan, Christopher; Pessanha, Ricardo (1998).The Brazilian sound: samba, bossa nova, and the popular music of Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press. p. 229.ISBN978-1-56639-544-1.
Neto, Luiz Costa-Lima (2015).The Experimental Music of Hermeto Pascoal and Group (1981 - 1993): Conception and Language. Lives in Music Series No. 13. Translated by Coimbra, Laura; Moore, Stephen Thomas. Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press.ISBN978-1576472248.OCLC1037874842.
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