Bang on a Can

arr. Evan Ziporyn

"I consider Hermeto Pascoal to be the father of modern contemporary music coming from Brazil," says Jovino Santos Neto, who for 15 years played piano and flute for Hermeto's group. "He is very fertile, always composing -- orchestral symphonies, string quartets, as well as music for his group. He is a great pianist, a great improviser and collaborated with Miles Davis in the early seventies. People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Ron Carter, Hubert Laws, they would talk about Hermeto and pass around his tapes, getting people turned on to his music. Jazz, improvisation, folkloric, ethnic, Brazilian music -- Hermeto is open to any influence. It's like cooking -- sometimes you come up with a new dish by adding new seasonings, but in the end it has to taste good. We played every day, six hours a day, seven days a week, to sew the musical ideas in our heads. They are highly elaborate compositions, but they never lose contact with the earth and are always linked to the basic Brazilian dance rhythms. In Brazil, Hermeto is considered eccentric because he blurs the barrier between what is musical tone and what is noise. He will have sax players blowing apple juice bottles filled with water and tuned to pitches. He will have the sound of animals in his pieces. Arapua is the name you give to a bumblebee. The piece is inspired by the humming sound that a bee makes and uses the lower registers of the instruments to create a kind of droning."