Hermeto Pascoal ( born in Lagoa da Canoa, Alagoas, Brazil on 22 June 1936; died 13 September 2025) was a Brazilian jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist remembered for his orchestration and improvisation, as well as for being a record producer and contributor to many Brazilian and international albums. From an early age, Pascoal was playing sanfona, meaning button accordion. At age eight, he started with the flute. Pascoal was a self-taught child prodigy. When he was eleven, he started performing in musical groups with his brother (Jose Neto Pascoal) and father (Pascoal José da Costa). He and his family moved to Recife in 1950. Pascoal starting playing in some groups there that would start getting radio time, and by 1960, he picked up the saxophone and created the group Som Quatro. His career began in 1964 with appearances on several Brazilian recordings alongside relatively unknown groups. These albums and the musicians involved (Edu Lobo, Elis Regina, Cesar Camargo Mariano) established widely influential new directions in post-bossa nova Brazilian jazz. He initially came to the wide attention through an appearance on Miles Davis' 1971 album Live-Evil, which featured Pascoal on several studio pieces (which he also composed). Davis has said that Pascoal was "the most impressive musician in the world". Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto Moreira and Flora Purim. From the late 1970s on he has mostly led his own groups, playing at many prestigious venues, such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979. Known as "o bruxo" (the sorcerer), "o mago" (the magician) or "o campeão" (the champion), Pascoal was a true albino. He later used nature as a basis for his compositions and experiments with non-conventional instruments such as teapots, children's toys and, sometimes, animals. A Brazilian television broadcast from 1999 showed him soloing at one point by singing into a cup with his mouth partially submerged in water. In 2019, his album Hermeto Pascoal e Sua Visão Original do Forró won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Portuguese Language Roots Album. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Hermeto+Pascoal">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.