Hermeto Pascoal R.I.P.
20 September, 2025I was very sad to read the news of the bearded one’s demise a week ago and felt that it should be marked in some way on Sounds and Colours. The trouble is, I didn’t know what to say without resorting to clichés and the kind of facts that you could find in most published obituaries. However, I read a very fine concise homage by Ian Patterson on the All About Jazz site (Pascoal did, after all, play with Miles Davis, who admired him considerably as a musician and a composer, and much of his music – quirky and sometimes bonkers as it was – could loosely be classified as jazz). Ian says just about all that needs saying and says it far better than I could. And he offers an erudite selection of some of Hermeto Pascoal’s finest moments.
So I’ll bid you ‘go there and read’ and rejoice in the man’s career and the unique music he created. What’s more, he had a good innings: 89’s a healthy knock for a professional touring musician, and what a rich, varied time he had of it. All hail, Archwizard Hermeto!
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