RIO DE JANEIRO — Hermeto Pascoal, an eccentric and prolific Brazilian multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger known affectionately as “The Sorcerer of Sounds” and “The Mad Genius,” has died. He was 89.
“With serenity and love, we announce that Hermeto Pascoal has passed on to the spiritual realm, surrounded by family and fellow musicians,” his family and team said in a statement late Saturday on Instagram. The statement did not provide a cause of death or say where he had died.
Pascoal was an instantly recognizable figure with a mane of white hair and a thick beard. He created music that defied fixed labels, blending jazz, samba, Brazilian popular music (MPB), bossa nova, chorinho and forró. An accomplished pianist, accordionist and flautist, he also used unconventional objects to produce sounds, including pints of beer, dolls, body parts, teacups and, perhaps most famously, live pigs.
On his 1977 album Slaves Mass, Pascoal squeezed a piglet to make it squeal for the opening of a track, and a photograph of him with the animal appeared on the album’s back cover. His experimental approach and prolific output led venues and critics to describe him as an iconoclast: the Barbican, a London venue where he was due to play in November, noted that he created more than 10,000 compositions.
Born June 22, 1936, in the northeastern state of Alagoas, Pascoal was albino, a condition that reportedly allowed him to avoid working long hours in the fields as a child. He taught himself to play his father’s accordion and moved with his family to the port city of Recife at about age 14, where he performed on local radio. He later established himself in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and began collaborating with other leading musicians.
During the 1960s he worked with drummer and percussionist Airto Moreira, who took him on tour to the United States. There, Pascoal met Miles Davis and later played on Davis’ 1971 album Live-Evil, a connection that helped launch an international phase of his career. He continued composing, performing and recording well into his 80s, often emphasizing the sacred and omnipresent nature of music. “I was born music; I haven't done anything without music,” he told Folha de S.Paulo last year. “What I write on a toilet bowl is as important as what I write on any paper, because music is sacred.”
News of his death prompted tributes across Brazil and internationally. “Brazilian music and culture owe a great deal to Hermeto Pascoal,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote Saturday on X. Caetano Veloso, a fellow Brazilian music legend, called Pascoal “one of the highest points in the history of music in Brazil.”
Pascoal’s career was noted both for its technical command of multiple instruments and for a restless curiosity about sound itself. He taught and influenced generations of musicians through recordings, concerts and workshops, and his experimental spirit left a mark on jazz and Brazilian popular music alike.
He is survived by six children.