Hermeto Pascoal

[John Morton]

Jovino Santos Neto has posted a marvelous collection of 41 pieces by his mentor Hermeto Pascoal in honor of Hermeto's 75th birthday, "75 anos de som".
http://www.jovisan.net/HP75.htm
Bless his heart, Jovino has included Bb and Eb transpositions. I have only scratched the surface, but the first thing that struck me was that all the pieces (including the transposed charts) have no key signature. This is difficult stuff any way you look at it, and I suspect it reads no easier however it is written. Scanning the chords there are few clues as to which is the tonic.

Has anyone worked with this material? Which pieces are the least challenging? Are there YouTubes to help out? I would love to find that it's not all way beyond me ...
John

[John McGann]

Very cool, thanks John! Hermeto's recordings are a blast; in some ways he's the Brazilian Zappa...jazz music is often written without a key signature, since the music shifts tonal centers so often. It's more "chromatic harmony" that can be analyzed, but is much more 'free' than diatonic.

[Spherical Abberation]

This was quite a find! Thanks for sharing!

I don't know of too many of Hermeto Pascoal's pieces, but I'm a big fan of Jovino. He released an album called Balaio with Richard Boukas that has a number of Pascoal's pieces on it though, you could start there.

[catmandu2]

I love Hermeto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxh6g...eature=related

Here's a nice article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...ermeto-pascoal ... Speaking of Zappa, track 4 of that '77 album - Slaves Mass (with the pig) - Cannon - has those trippy tape-speeded-up "munchkin" vocal tracks that Frank liked.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wkCNhTC-0U-

I spent a lot of time listening and transposing music by Egberto Gismonti--whose compositions modulate quite a bit. The Brazilians have a flair for step wise chromaticism

[catmandu2]

[Al Bergstein]

An aside, as many of you may already know. Jovino will be teaching again this April at the Choro workshop at Centrum in Port Townsend. He was there last year, and it was a spectacular thing to be in the late night jams with him. Just an amazing, friendly sharing musician and teacher. But he will push you also in a class. Not for the beginner. We've expanded this year to start on Wednesday night and work through Sunday morning. An extra day was needed.

[Choro1985]

Hermeto is one of my favorites!
He has recently released his entire discography to the public to share around the world! So there is a lot of Hermeto on the net, it's just kind of scattered around..... His website is great and it has free songs downloads and a growing score archive! It contains his complete CALENDÁRIO DO SOM (Calendar of Sounds) project. When from June 23rd, 1996, through June 22nd, 1997, he wrote one composition a day, to honor his 60th birthday and, falling on a leap year, giving everyone in the world a birthday song! It also contains the hand written scores that Jovino used to make the 75anos collection. This becomes very useful as Hermeto's chord notation is very much his own system and sometimes very different from "standard jazz" or lead sheet notation. So by comparing Jovino's "standardized" arrangements with Hermeto's hand written manuscript you gain some insight on interpreting Hermeto's harmony.

http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/english/index.asp

[Choro1985]

John,
If you (or anybody) are just getting into Hermeto's music I think some of his earlier works are the least challenging, and harmonically more accessible. Jovino also released a 70th birthday collection, containing 15 tunes. There are quite a few tunes that lay very nicely on the mando and a few of the tunes where recorded by Mike Marshall and Jovino on the Serenata album.
http://www.4shared.com/document/ncCx...gbook__he.html

Bebe is a great tune:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56540318/Hermeto-Pascoal-
Bebe

Chorinho Pra Ele
http://www.ethosbrasil.com/parts/Bra...inhoPraEle.pdf

Rebulico
http://www.ethosbrasil.com/parts/Brasil/Rebulico.pdf

Hope that keeps you busy! I've played all of these tunes and they are very fun on the mando!

If you need any help give a shout!

[John Morton]

John,
There are quite a few tunes that lay very nicely on the mando and a few of the tunes where recorded by Mike Marshall and Jovino on the Serenata album.
http://www.4shared.com/document/ncCx...gbook__he.html

If you need any help give a shout!

Thanks for the pointers. My dirty secret is that my perspective is that of the clarinetist, with a particular interest in transposed parts with duet potential. Jovino's 75 anos collection got my attention with those 2 part pieces, which included Bb and Eb transpositions. I'll now be going back over the Marshall/Jovino material by way of introduction to this awesome work.
John

[luckylarue]

Mike & Hamilton do a beautiful version of "Sao Jorge" on their cd.

[luckylarue]