Michael Ray keeps Sun Ra in the house

By Alex Rawls

from jazze.com

A young man who looked like an Aussie-rules football star couldn't contain himself. He bounced up and down while Michael Ray and the Cosmic Krewe played Friday night at Sweet Lorraine's in New Orleans. The audience may have been dominated by IAJE attendees, but the show was anything but academic. Every song became an athletic event, with Ray dancing to his own keyboard solo, tenor player Tim Green doubling over to coax out hard bop riffs, and drummer Leon Alexander demonstrating a frighteningly fast right foot. With three percussionists, the show was a physical, polyrythmic event that put a New Orleans twist on Ray's mentor, Sun Ra.

Ray paid tribute to Sun Ra with a version of "Shadow World" that climaxed with an inspired solo by guest flautist/keyboard player Jovino Santos Neto. Twisting and gliding while playing, he had the smile of someone who knew he was in the middle of something real. Finishing a line, he turned like a tap dancer and gestured to the rest of the band as if to say, "top that." His presence added a level of energy that was all the more impressive because he only had an hour's practice to pick up the songs.

A jazzman from Brazil finds a home in Seattle

by Paul de Barros

Seattle Times jazz critic

Seven years ago, when Brazilian keyboard man Jovino Santos Neto enrolled at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, a lot of local musicians wondered why this ace from the sunny south was suddenly moving to the soggy Northwest. Wouldn't Seattle get dull and gray for a Cariocan who had spent the past 15 years touring the world with Hermeto Pascoal, one of the most colorful, creative musicians on the planet? What on earth would Santos Neto find to do here? Today, it's hard to imagine the town without him.

Santos Neto, who will perform with his quartet at Bumbershoot (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Charlotte Martin Theatre), never seems to run out of ideas. Look at any weekly listing (or his own Web site, www.jovisan.net and there you'll find him - performing, teaching, lecturing, collaborating, producing or composing something, somewhere. In the past year alone, he has composed a piece for the New York chamber group, Musicians Accord; lectured at Jack Straw in Seattle as well as the New School in New York; recorded with a master of the vina, an Indian instrument, for Naxos Records; made a new album with guitarist Richard Boukas, "Balaio," for Malandro; conducted and recorded an hour of music with the NDR Big Band in Hamburg, Germany; conducted a concert of Pascoal's music at the Barbican Center in London; recorded with local singer Joyce Yarrow in a world fusion project called "Total Reflex"; made a live recording with his quartet at Olympia's State Theatre; produced a new album for the local Brazilian jazz group Urban Oasis; and snagged a major publisher for Pascoal's music.

Amid this whirlwind, the 45-year-old pianist still finds time to teach at Cornish and to do workshops at his daughter's school. "And you know," says the ebullient musician, noted for his enthusiastic and passionate personal style, "I'm managing to do all these things without going crazy." Santos Neto talks fast, with a light Brazilian accent. He has wildly sprouting salt-and-pepper hair and a contagiously positive attitude. That last attribute is probably why other musicians - and students - like him so much. He is a brilliant and intuitive keyboard player (and flutist) who explores jazz, classical and Brazilian traditional music with equal zeal. He was serendipitously snared into a life of music at 23. "I had studied biology in Canada and was going to do my master's in the Amazon, in 1977," explained Santos Neto, who grew up in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Realengo. "I came back to Rio for a few days and I met Hermeto, just by chance. He was living very close to my parents. He said, 'My group has a concert next Friday. Would you like to play with us?' He had never heard me play."

Thus began a 15-year odyssey with one of the world's strangest and most highly regarded musicians. Brazil's answer to Sun Ra and Frank Zappa, Pascoal is an albino guru who once recorded with Miles Davis. Santos Neto soaked up the master's mystic-like confidence, playing with him on numerous world tours and albums ("Fest of the Gods," "Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo," "Live in Montreux").

In the meantime, the young keyboardist married, had two children and began to think about how and where his kids would grow up. "Rio had become very violent," he recalled. "It was in every neighborhood. You couldn't get away from it." Once he broached the idea of leaving Rio, Santos Neto also realized he had a yen to study music formally. In 1990, Pascoal passed through Seattle, and Santos Neto says he "had a good feeling" about the city. Three years later, on a recommendation from Cornish trombone instructor Julian Priester, the pianist moved to the Emerald City and began studying composition and conducting at the school. Soon, Santos Neto's kids, Ariel and Maira, were attending Seattle public schools, and he was on the other side of the lectern at Cornish, teaching Brazilian rhythms and improv. His influence already can be felt in the growing sophistication in Brazilian rhythms among local musicians, Urban Oasis being but one good example. Santos Neto also started his own Brazilian jazz quartet with Cornish bass instructor Chuck Deardorf, saxophonist Hans Teuber and drummer Mark Ivester. The band's new album, "Quinteto Live in Olympia" (Liquid City), due this fall, has some marvelous percussion by Jeff Busch and San Francisco saxophonist Harvey Wainapel.

Like Hermeto, Santos Neto continually seeks out musical hybrids, but about such fusions he warns, "At the same time that people must have a very open mind, they must be very comfortable with their own accent. If I am going to play with someone from Africa, whether I want to or not, it's going to come out as Brazilian." Santos Neto is the most important curator of Pascoal's music, cataloguing, transcribing and, in some cases, orchestrating his compositions, which number more than 2,000. The concert in London this past July grew out of that. "Two weeks before I left," remarked Santos Neto, "Hermeto was still sending me new music! One of the pieces was a tribute to London and its people. Another one was for Lady Diana. They are talking about actually touring, even going to Brazil."

Speaking of Brazil, does he ever get the homesickness his countrymen call saudade?

"As you grow older," he answered thoughtfully, "you find that your concept of home doesn't have to be so small. I just got back from Brazil. I felt at home there. I go to New York, to London, and to the Bay Area. But I still like to live in Seattle. Every time I come back to Seattle, it's a really good feeling. I feel like I'm really coming home."

Review of Balaio by Egídio Leitão, April 2001

www.caravanmusic.com/Terrabrasilis.htm

Richard Boukas & Jovino Santos Neto: Balaio: I could simply say that Balaio is the new work by former Hermeto Pascoal's band member Jovino Santos Neto (piano, flute) along with Richard Boukas (guitar, bass, cavaquinho, mandolin, percussion, voice). That should suffice for most people. However, there is a lot more to be said about the creative music these two accomplished musicians present us. With a repertoire that includes original music by both Boukas and Santos Neto as well as some incredible music by Pascoal, Balaio is inventive, creative and delightful. Not a moment in this album is dull. It is amazing, indeed, that it took only two musicians to produce such music. Boukas does some awesome solos in a constant duel with Santos Neto's extraordinary piano work. At times the duo is serene, as in Pascoal's "Campinas," or playful as in Boukas's own "ChoroBop." Their talents shine track after track. Balaio is, as its name implies, a basket full of surprises at every note.

This interview was posted on the student section of Cornish College of the Arts' Web site

Journey into Music with Jovino Santos Neto
by Amber Flame

Jovino Santos Neto is a professor at Cornish College of the Arts. He was born on September 18, 1954 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He started playing piano at age 13, and by 16 was playing organ in a band called "The Vacancy Group" in Bangu, West Zone of Rio. He got a degree in Biology, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and later from MacDonald College of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In 1977 Jovino joined the group led by the legendary Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal.

In the 15 years that followed, Jovino, along with his colleagues Carlos Malta (saxophones and flute), Itiberê Zwarg (bass), Marcio Bahia (drums), Fabio Pascoal (percussion) and Pernambuco (percussion), created an ensemble under the leadership of Hermeto, that has been considered one of the premier groups in the world. They rehearsed for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and Hermeto, inspired by their talent and dedication, composed hundreds of themes that extend the boundaries of contemporary music. It was in this school that Jovino sharpened his talents as a pianist, flutist, composer and arranger.

Amber: When and why did you move to Seattle?

I moved up here as a student at Cornish in 1993. . I came here because I wanted to take some conducting lessons, from Cornish professor Roger Nelson. I attended for two semesters, taking his conducting class. By the third semester, I was here teaching.

Can you tell us about the arts community in Rio di Janiero, compared to your experience of the arts community in Seattle?

Both are cool, but very different; it’s hard to put one alongside the other. I feel that I still belong in the arts community there; I go there at least once a year and stay in contact with everyone I know. For me life is about artistic passion, and I don’t feel that I have to replace one for the other.

Brazil being the country that it is, I would say that there is a lot of creativity, and there are a lot of great musicians over there. But it’s hard just to get things going and to start performing. It’s hard to make projects come to fruition, to really rehearse and put together groups. I was in a great group over there but it was time to move on and do my own thing, and I figured out that I needed some kind of distance to be able to organize that. If I stayed there, I’d end up doing the same thing with the same guys and I needed a little bit of distance. The cool thing here is that even though Seattle’s not a musical center as big as say, New York or San Francisco, it is easier to go to these places than if I were in Brazil. So moving here was moving to a wider scene altogether.

What creative mediums are you involved in?

I do a lot of different things, but most of them have to do with music. I work with my own band, as a soloist, as a jazz player. I also work as an educator, and sometimes I work just as a composer or arranger. Each one of these is like a separate job, and then I try to combine them, and to do that in different places, that’s the good thing. I’m not locked here in Seattle and I can actually play other places. These are the things I can do. I can just hop in an airplane and in a few hours I’m there, so I like the kind of fast paced, moving life it gives me. My artistic life varies, goes through a lot of different things, and most of it is music, some places more than others. Some months I do a lot of traveling, other months I’m working at home as a composer sending my music out, some months I’m teaching. And I like the fact that it’s not regular.

Do you record about as much as you perform? What is the balance there?

No, I don’t record as much. I like recording a lot, but there are not as many recording projects anymore. I’d love to do a recording, a new record with my group, because there’s a lot of new music, but to put together a good quality recording is a lot of money, and I’d rather wait until things are in the right place to do it well. It isn’t as a player, on other people’s recordings. I’ve done a couple, but it’s been awhile, and it’s ok, because meanwhile I prepare myself, I write my music, and perform more.

How did you get started in music?

I started to play piano when I was twelve. It was fun, I enjoyed doing it, but it was not really something I could see doing as a career. When I was fifteen or so, I joined a band. And again, it was just something that I would do after school, but we started to play and get gigs. I still went to college, to study biology. I had a band there, and I was playing all the time, but I thought this was just something I was going to do on the side. It was when I actually graduated from college, and I moved back to Brazil, that I became a professional musician, and I never worked in biology. I was twenty-three.

So you graduated with a Bachelor’s in biology? Did you ever get any other training in music?

The only academic training in music I got was the classes I did took here at Cornish. Other than that I had fifteen years with (Brazilian musical legend) Hermeto Pascual, and that was my training. It wasn’t a school, like a teaching school. It was a group in which we learned everything from playing, improvising, composing, and arranging. It was more an apprenticeship, sit with a guy who does that, and help him, until you know what he knows. That’s how we learned.

Hermeto Pascual was your mentor. How long were you with him?

I was in his group for fifteen years, but I’m still in touch with him.

Your training was actually more in the tradition of jazz, the oral tradition?

You hang out with the guy who knows a lot more than you, and he gives you things to do. You do them, and as you get better, he gives you more things to do, and that’s my training.

What about theoretical training, such as we learn at Cornish?

Oh that was in there; you have to develop your ears to play and we had to pick up things that Pascoal played and transcribe it, and he would write this very complex music. By write, I mean he would play this very complex music, and I had to write it. I had to come up with ways to figure out how to express it, and of course he would help, but at the beginning I didn’t have much of a clue how to do things like that. He learned the same way, he learned by asking people, and when you try, the music has a kind of character and space that you get to know.

So would you say that is a difference between America and Brazil, the method of learning from a mentor?

No, I wouldn’t say that, because not even in Brazil can I say that this is happening in all other situations. This happens all around the world. This is something that has happened before here as well. The different groups, like Miles Davis, Betty Carter, Sun Ra, all these people who got into these groups, learned by doing. In groups like this, learning together elevates the level of everybody in the group.

How do you feel about collaboration?

Oh, I love it. It’s one of the ways that I keep the challenge alive, by getting involved with something I don’t know how to do, and using it as a chance for me to learn. The Yiddish erotica show was a way to learn the accordion for me. I always wanted to learn to play accordion, I had dabbled a bit, but I never really played. I was sitting in the comfort zone. In this show, the accordion was the main instrument, there was no bass, and I had to use my right hand, and focus on getting that part of my chops together because I had to. It was great in the sense that it really challenged me to learn a new style that I had never played before. I’m not saying I will become a Yiddish accordion player, but I certainly learned a lot of things that will be incorporated in my own music.

What are you working on now?

This month, I am working on a project that is based on the journey of Lewis and Clark, all the people they met along the way, and the music of all the different tribes. We are trying to recreate the musical aspect of the journey. I wrote music for a string quartet, I play piano, along with native flute players, drum players and singers. There are two shows coming up, one in October, one in November. In January, we take it to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, which is where the trip started.
I also teach at Music Works Northwest working with high school aged kids, and I lead an ensemble there similar to the one I lead here, but they’re much younger. Last year I had my players range from 14 to 17. Basically I teach them at the same level as I teach the students here, but it takes longer. Early next year I’m doing a project with a group called Everybody Has A Song, which is working with at-risk youth. They get music and instruments and they get to do what they want, create a song, or come up with a beat. I’m actually going to do some work with them and my band, we’re going to take our rehearsals to them and share our process of how the music is put together with the kids. We encourage them to write their own stuff as well, and we’ll play the stuff that they write. And that will be in conjunction with the Cornish music series here.

What is your creative process?

We’re coming into contact with a culture that is thousands of years old, and that culture has it’s own truth. You cannot approach something like that with an arrogant attitude, or think you know what you’re doing. You have to be really humble, you have to be willing to learn a lot, you have to learn to meet people on their own terms, and you have to learn to come to them and use the language of music as a translation. Sometimes, all the people I’m working with know is this song. They learn it from their grandparents, who learn it from their grandparents, this is a tradition of generations. If I’m going to do something musically with that, I have to have a lot of respect. It’s not something that I can just fiddle with and do my own thing. That’s my starting point. If I do that, and I do it well, I am able to add things to it, all my influences and ideas can come together. If you come from a place of a lot of respect, you actually receive a sort of guideline of what to do and what not to do, so you can really achieve something. Music is a real bridge between all these different people.

What about when you’re working by yourself? What do you start with?

Sometimes it’s a melody, sometimes chords, sometimes it’s a theme given to me by somebody else. I don’t rule anything out. In music there are so many things that can be done and I like to challenge myself to try something that I’ve never done.

Do you work with Cornish students and alumni?

I just finished a collaboration with DJ Tamara, an alumni of Cornish. We worked with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, I played the piano part, and she added some beats, sent it back to me, I added some more melodies, and I sent it back to her. It’s coming out on her cd, and it was very interesting to work with her.
I work with students at the school here too. I like to work with anyone who wants to play. Over the past three years, I’ve worked with Flora McGill, a jazz vocalist here at Cornish, who is a very talented musician. I do it because I like the music she writes, I help her out with shaping the songs and getting musical ideas. As long as there is musical interest, I want to do it.

I work with students, alumni, and also the faculty here. I’m in a band with Julian Priester, and a couple of people who went to school here, they have a really creative band and Julian and I play with them.

How has working here at Cornish affected your own art?

I had never taught until I moved here, not one single lesson. I never taught anything to anybody. When I got here, it was something that I started doing because at first I needed to make a little money and I couldn’t work. So I’d give a little lesson here and there. But it still felt very awkward at the beginning. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could actually learn a lot this way. Even though the whole academic thing is not something that I grew up with, in a place like Cornish I find that there’s a very interesting atmosphere, which I like, where you are in touch with people from many different areas in music. I hang out with Roger Nelson, who is a classical pianist and conductor, and I hang out with the jazz guys, and I work with Paul Taub, a classical flutist, we write music together. And I think that having somebody like (Music Department Chair) Laura Kaminsky, who has a good vision of all sides of music, helps a lot. That’s one of the reasons I’m here, because there’s somebody like her, who has a vision that pulls together music, not one that breaks it apart. That’s the way I think about music too. There are rules that are not very natural, rules that are created out of the desire to keep something out, not bring it together. So the attitude of expanding your horizons musically is something that attracts me. When I see people who want to do that, I want to be there too, because that expands my own horizons.

What do you see yourself doing in five years?

Even though I enjoy teaching a lot, and I enjoy some of the other things that I do, one of the things that I’d like the most is to perform more. I’ve done that almost my entire life. I like doing that. I’d like to be doing more of that. I would hope that in five years I would have established a bigger name in the business so that I could perform more. There are a lot of places that I’m still waiting to go with music. I want to go to places that I’ve been to, and that I’ve never been to, not only in this country, but all around the world. I want to use music as a means to get there and to get to know the place. Music is a powerful tool, and I want to go to places that are going through hard times with a lot of hatred, these are the places that need music more than anywhere else. There are no musicians, they need people to go there, and instead of sending an army to these places, send a group of musicians. That is a very powerful thing. I don’t say this as just an idealist, but the reality is that music can heal a lot. What’s at the center of a lot of conflict is that people have not been healed, and music could help with that.

Do you write political, or socially conscious music?

Yeah, I think that music, even if it doesn’t have any lyrics, can be political. Many times a chord or a melody, well played at the right time, can change people’s minds more than words. I don’t have anything against words, but there are some things words cannot express and you can get caught up and confused about meaning and certain wording. A whole bunch of fights can begin because somebody singing one thing and someone else thinking they meant another. The words can get in the way. With wordless music, you don’t have that. You can be very direct, and sometimes it’s really important what words cannot express. Music is a very deep and strong force. If you can imagine a world without music, it would be a very different world than we have. A world with more music would also be very different. It would be better.

Do you have a long-term goal?

Not really. I think I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. If I can get to the point where I can play regularly, play music as long as I have a body that can support going out there on stage, I’d like to do that with my life. There are some people who work very hard at something so they can imagine that when they retire they can finally do what they always wanted to do. But I’m doing what I really want to do right now. So I can’t really think of stopping to do something else. I just want to do this better, and more of it. Go deeper and further in music. I want to get very old playing this music. I want to be two hundred years old, up on stage playing this music and moving it.

If you could give graduating students a piece of advice, what would it be?

The vision of art keeps changing as you grow as an artist, as you get deeper into what it is that you do, and sometimes people kind of confuse that with other things. There are some who mistake getting better at art with becoming more famous, with more money. All those things are good, I want to be famous and make a lot of money too, but there’s something which is before that, and that is being true to yourself. It has nothing to do with style or genre, but if you do it from the real place that art comes from, which is deep from your heart, that is all you need. Because art is so powerful, there are a lot of people who try to take advantage of it, for purposes that have nothing to do with art. I think you should really focus on what art is, and what it can be for each one of you. You can go very far with it and develop it. A lot of people think when they graduate, they finish something, but it’s not true, because in art there’s no end. The thing to realize is that you always have someone to learn from, no matter how old you are, and you always have someone you can teach. If you put yourself in the middle of that flow of artistic energy, and you keep that flow all the time, everything is fine. That’s the way to go.

Review printed in The Oakland Express (Oakland, CA) of November 10, 2000

by Andrew Bourcier

JOVINO SANTOS NETO QUINTETO

at Yoshi's, Oakland, Monday, November 6

It was a usual-suspects crowd at Yoshi's on Monday night, the die-hard Brazilian music fans who seem to show up for every major Brazilian gig, greeting each other warmly and swapping news about the next big show. There was nothing usual about the music on tap, though, as the remarkable pianist/composer Jovino Santos Neto led his quintet through an electrifying set of high-powered Brazilian jazz. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Santos Neto is best known for his fifteen-year tenure with the legendary multi-instrumentalist/composer Hermeto Pascoal, though he's also performed widely with percussionist Airto, singer Joyce, and steel drum master Andy Narell. He's been based in Seattle since the early 90's, and has assembled a highly cohesive working band featuring Bay Area heavyweight Harvey Wainapel on soprano and tenor sax, Chuck Deardorf on bass, Mark Ivester on drums and Jeff Busch on percussion. Celebrating the release of an excellent new album on Liquid City, Ao Vivo em Olympia, the group played a wide-ranging set of Santos Neto's lyrical compositions.

Using rhythms and song forms from various regions of Brazil, Santos Neto writes tunes with the harmonic complexity of bebop, while depending on his musicians to elaborate on his self-propelling melodic lines. Much of his music is inspired by particular settings, which gives his songs visual as well as emotional resonance. "A Mountain Atop a Mountain" opened with Wainapel playing a fluttery line on soprano sax over twangy percussion, and slowly expanded into a sweeping vista as the rest of the group joined in and the melody took flight. On "Carmel", a tune based on the baião song form of northeastern Brazil, Busch kept time with a triangle as the band played a churning country dance rhythm.

Santos Neto is a technically dazzling pianist who maintains a graceful fluidity no matter what the tempo. Indeed, the set's high point was a solo piano piece- "Ilza Nova", a tune by Pascoal that Santos Neto dedicated to his mentor's late wife. While keeping a steady, almost stride rhythm with his left hand, Santos Neto played a series of percussive variations with his right, reaching a crescendo that owed more to Romantic classical music than jazz. He closed the set with "The Girl's Colors", a sweetly naive theme that turned into a cascading, multihued ride. It was a bravura performance, leaving no doubt that the Bay Area music scene would be enriched by regular visits from the Quinteto.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ SEATTLE | February/March 2005

Northwest Musicians featured at the 2005 IAJE Convention

By Jason Mueller

For four days every January, the International Association of Jazz Educators Conference (IAJE) is the center of the jazz universe. What started 32 years ago as a conference for jazz educators has now become the place to be for over 7,000 musicians, radio personalities, media, promoters and the jazz business community. This year the conference was held in rain-soaked Long Beach, CA, and as in past years, featured a strong Northwest jazz presence.

Held in the Long Beach Conference Center and the adjoining Hilton Hotel, there was never a shortage of music to hear, though for the most part, it was hard to forget that you were listening in a hotel conference room. All of that changed when the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto took the stage Thursday night, January 6 and transformed the sterile confines into a hopping nightclub.

The group, featuring Jovino on piano, Harvey Wainapel on woodwinds, Chuck Deardorf on bass, Mark Ivester on drums and Jeff Busch on percussion, performed a nearly flawless, intimate set comprised largely of Jovino’s original music.

Jovino, always animated behind the piano, had the audience’s complete attention throughout the 50 minute set. The rhythm section of Deardorf, Ivester and Busch were as tight and cohesive as anything heard during the conference.

Public Radio’s Jim Wilke, who was in attendance for the performance said, "It is a band with a real concept and energy that grows out of the combination of musicians. I could feel it in the crowd. People were really diggin’ it."

This is a band that sounds as one and by the end of the set the audience was in complete agreement leaping out of their seats for a standing ovation.

Canto do Rio review

by Elliott Simon, All About Jazz New York, February 2005

This past month at NYC’s Symphony Space, David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness and the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto effectively highlighted how ethnically based folk music can provide inspiration for modern musicians to develop their own distinctive approaches. In pianist Neto’s case, he builds upon the forrós, maracatus and baiãos of Northeastern Brazil to create colorful contemporary jazz while clarinetist Krakauer draws on Jewish bulgars, freylekhs and doinas to ground new musical creations. The Quinteto performed selected cuts from their Latin Grammy nominated CD Canto Do Rio and Klezmer Madness delighted with their original brand of klez-jazz-funk that prominently features samples and beats courtesy of DJ SoCalled.

...Canto Do Rio presents a smorgasboard of NE Brazilian styles in a decidedly modern context. Neto plays a potent piano and the dual horns of Hans Teuber and Harvey Wainapel make for a crisp sound. Such is the case on "Guanabara", as clarinet and soprano sax melodically converse, and the percussively interesting "Pedra Branca". Jeff Busch is a master of the various Brazilian rhythms and native percussive instruments that give this music its wonderful texture. He comes to the fore with drummer Mark Ivester to add depth to the dueling altos of "Batuki di Bangu" and Chuck Deardorf’s ethereal bass line on the hauntingly beautiful "Sempre Sim". Both Krakauer and Neto through their individualistic styles accent a pride in their musics’ origins combined with an excitement for its future.

The meeting felt more organic with Mr. Santos's sun-baked and fastidious Brazilian jazz in selections inspired by the outskirts of his native Rio de Janeiro. Grooves ran deep; solos were deeper.

New York Times review of the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto

Jeremy Eichler, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2005

Entire review is below:

Music Review | Chamber Music America: Stretching Chamber Music to Its Furthest Reaches (and Beyond)

What do Brazilian jazz; klezmer laced with rap, funk and sampling; and the lyrical postminimalist soundscapes of Ingram Marshall have in common?

I'm not sure either, but for lack of better options, we can call it the sound of a chamber music organization expanding its tent. These acts turned up on a single program at Symphony Space yesterday, in the second of two concerts presented by the service organization Chamber Music America as part of its annual conference, which took place in New York over the last several days.

On a musical level, all the acts - the Clogs, David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness and the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto - offered some smart and engaging playing, but you often wondered how exactly this could be called chamber music. One need not be a purist to ask whether the term retains much meaning when stretched so widely.

The Clogs, a new-music ensemble that opened the evening with a compelling performance of Mr. Marshall's "In Deserto (Smoke Creek)," came the closest to any traditional
definition of the chamber music genre. That was partly because of the group's instrumentation - violin/viola, cello, guitar, bassoon and percussion - and because Mr.
Marshall's evocative and curiously soulful music draws deeply from 20th-century classical sources, ranging from Sibelius to minimalism.

Mr. Krakauer, the clarinetist, came next, airing his latest experiments in fusing klezmer with rock, soul and hip-hop. To be sure, Mr. Krakauer is an impressive classically trained player, but some of his connections between genres were less convincing than his own fiercely intense virtuosity. Even when bolstered by his remarkable technique, the klezmer often felt too distant from the club beats and electric guitar licks over which it was placed. The meeting felt more organic with Mr. Santos's sun-baked and fastidious Brazilian jazz in selections inspired by the outskirts of his native Rio de Janeiro. Grooves ran deep; solos were deeper.

In a way, the concert was also a chance for Chamber Music America to showcase the breadth of its grant-making, since all three ensembles had received its support. No doubt the
choice of ensembles was also connected to this year's conference theme, as captured in its title, "Found in the Shuffle: Authenticity in Today's Musical Market." The conference program spoke of a perpetual search for "new blends of artistic forms."

There is both good sense and danger in this advice. Despite its potential marketability, genre-bending can never in itself be considered an intrinsic good. The musical fusion must argue its own merits in each case, and there is also, of course, something to be said for the alternative choice: sticking within one particular genre, and achieving a mastery that commands an attention all its own.

Canto do Rio review from www.jazznow.com April 2004

Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto

Canto Do Rio

Liquid City Records LQC 34453

Jovino Santo Neto, Fender Rhodes, piano; Chuck Deardorf, electric and acoustic basses; Mark Ivester, drums; Jeff Busch, percussion; Hans Teuber, saxophones, flutes; Guests: Harvey Wainapel, saxophones, clarinet; Flora McGill, voice; Mike Marshall, mandolin; Pernambuco, vocal interpretation

The sounds of Rio de Janeiro are brought to life with some intricately woven patterns and exciting color; all composed by Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto and played by his good self and his quintet, with some extra help from the voice of Flora McGill, the saxophones and clarinet of Harvey Wainapel and the mandolin of Mike Marshall. This is uplifting, busy music. Just listen to "Primavera Em Flor"; and "Comichao" is another full and flying piece. The whole set bustles with enthusiasm and activity, flutes, saxophones, voice and the zippy Fender Rhodes intermix with the warmth of the market place. Latin music played by first-class musicians with a world flavor; full, buxom and satisfying.

by Ferdinand Maylin

Hearsay from Jazz Times, March '04

Traversing almost 7,000 miles can be demanding for any traveler. "Affinity", however, is how keyboardist and composer Jovino Santos Neto describes the reason for his move from Rio to Seattle. Thence, after a decade and a half with Hermeto Pascoal, he has been teaching at Cornish College of the Arts, nurturing a career as a leader as well as disseminating Pascoal's oeuvre through printed and musical works.

On his new CD, Canto do Rio (Liquid City), Santos Neto communicates "what it feels like to live in a city full of contrasts", he says. "Our most popular spots have already been sung by some of Brazil's greatest composers, so I wanted to present a different side painting a colorful portrait. Inspiration came from other influences, such as the outlying areas of the city, immigrants, as well as the concept of Rio as a river-which is what rio stands for in Portuguese-or a stream of musical ideas picking up influences as it flows."

Santos Neto achieves that painterly musical goal triumphantly by relying primarily on musicians who have played together for 10 years. "Over the years we have explored many aspects of grooves and styles based on traditional Brazilian forms, but I never forced the musicians to play like they were born somewhere else," he says. "I am proud of the way these great American jazz players have incorporated the essence of the music I brought along, while never losing their personal style in the process. In a sense, this has created a new way of playing as the idea of 'authenticity' has never been an important factor for me. I am more interested in how the grooves are built, in the harmonic possibilities and the collective interaction that happens all the time with this band."

Another recent release, Serenata: The Music of Hermeto Pascoal (Adventure), features Santos Neto on piano and flute, with Mike Marshall on mandolin and guitar as well as Pascoal on melodica and bass flute. Santos Neto says that the recording focuses "on the more lyrical aspects of Pascoal's writing, and Mike, with beautiful and inspired interpretations was the right man for the job." Pascoal, he adds, "has expanded musical options, incorporating folkloric styles, free jazz and classical idioms into a universal musical language while opening the harmonic realm, developing novel chord progressions and creating freedom in individual expression."

Both recordings are as pleasurable as drinking caipirinhas while taking in the view from Seattle's Space Needle. Javier Quiñones

Review of SERENATA, by Don Heckman

Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2003

rating: 3 1/2 stars

Masterful tribute to Brazilian master

Mike Marshall and Jovino Santos Neto

Serenata: The Music of Hermeto Pascoal (Adventure Music)

Multi-genre guitarist-mandolinist Mike Marshall and Brazilian pianist Neto make an unusually emphatic duo. But the real star here is Pascoal, the wildly eccentric, wildly gifted Brazilian musical master (who, on his 60th. birthday in 1996, decided to write a new composition every day for the next year to celebrate the milestone - and did so).

Pascoal - who plays every imaginable formal instrument as well as every sound-making device (garden hoses, teapots) he can find - is generally thought of as a composer of thorny, challenging music.

But the pieces included here (selected by Neto, the sole curator for Pascoal's work) are filled with lyrical delights. Examples: the lovely melody of "Roseando", soaring from one point to another, never quite landing before moving on; the pensive "Floresta", played as a solo piano piece; the insistent rhythms of "Quanto Mais Longe, Mais Perto".

Perhaps best of all, there is the bolero-like modinha, "Saudades do Brasil", with Pascoal himself playing one of his utterly unique bass flute solos. The album is a sourcebook of material for jazz players, overflowing with the sort of beautifully phrased themes and richly harmonic springboards that are ideal for improvisation. And there's more than one tune that offers fascinating material for enterprising lyricists.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

from Brazzil magazine, april 1996

Seattle-based Jovino Santos Neto has one mission: to make Hermeto Pascoal musical genius known to the world. He has collected Hermeto's original manuscripts and has a file of over one thousand of his compositions. Maybe Jovino can help us solve the mystery why despite being considered a genius in Europe Hermeto is all but unk nown in the US.

by Bruce Gilman

"Jazz, classical, folk, world, those are all labels that music merchants use to put on bins at record stores. They should never be applied to a musician's brain."

"When you really learn music, you learn all music. Music is like the air and the water. It flows from here to there, changes its aspects, but its essence is timeless. It truly holds the world together."

During his 15 year tenure with Hermeto Pascoal and O Grupo, Jovino Santos Neto was endowed with an unparalleled musical language and philosophy that continues to awe the world's top musicians. An incredibly articulate musician whose gentle manner conceals his prowess, Santos Neto has made it his mission to dispatch the music of Hermeto Pascoal to the world. He has collected all of Hermeto's original manuscripts and created a file of over one thousand compositions.

Everything from orchestral and chamber settings to the pieces that were actually performed and recorded by O Grupo is being transcribed and notated so that other musicians will be able to read this unique repertoire. As a result of his tenacity, much of this vast body of work will soon be available through a German publisher. In addition, to celebrate Hermeto's 60th birthday, Santos Neto recorded a stunning CD of Hermeto's music for solo piano.

The pianist, flutist, and co-producer of most of Hermeto's albums juggles an impossible schedule that includes touring and recording with Fourth World (lead by two other Hermeto alumni, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim), teaching Jazz Ensemble at Cornish College of the Arts, in Seattle, freelancing as a session player and conductor, re-orchestrating Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and performing and recording with his own group, The Jovino Santos Neto Quartet. Refreshingly, Jovino is as unpretentious a player as he is a formidable one. Our interview took place during a break in Fourth World's hectic touring schedule and touched on many aspects of his esteemed career beginning with his years as a member of O Grupo and with Hermeto Pascoal.

What was it like working with Hermeto?

The only thing we could be sure of when playing with Hermeto was that we would be rehearsing from Monday to Friday, from 2 to 8 p.m. There wasn't much chance of becoming bored, however, because every rehearsal was different. One day we worked on something that Hermeto composed. The next rehearsal was completely improvised. And the next day Hermeto would compose right in front of us. We were his apprentices and he made sure we developed our own styles. The first thing he taught us was to listen to ourselves. At times we would not play a gig for months, but we would be there preparing new music. Recording was always a rare event. Only a small fraction of Hermeto's vast output as a composer was recorded. We did a fair amount of touring, mostly in Europe and a couple of US tours. During the times when we would be working on recording a new album, we would sometimes spend a month in São Paulo in the studio for at least 12 hours a day.

Do you feel that Hermeto was your teacher as well as your band leader?

Yes, Hermeto has a natural gift for discovering the potential talent in a young musician, and he knows how to make that talent grow and mature. For example, he told me right after I joined his group that I could become a conductor. At first I thought this was nonsense, because I had no idea of what conducting was. But with time I began to take care of his scores for orchestras and big bands. Now I am a conductor. Hermeto also knows how to write music that is just beyond what you are capable of playing at the time, so that in the process of studying that particular piece you learn exactly that new skill that was lacking. In his arrangements, all the parts are given something challenging to play. He composed new music in front of us, so we could see the process taking place. Since the group's line-up was constant for so many years, he also could write with these musicians in mind. Now that I am working on my own compositions and arrangements, I see how important that factor is!

Did the other members of O Grupo also see Hermeto as their teacher?

Yes, as I said before, Hermeto knows which language to use with any specific musician, so that his ideas are felt and understood. That is why most of the musicians who came in contact with him speak so highly of "O Campeão" -- the Champ. That is what he called his co-workers, and in turn what they called him.

Can you describe a typical O Grupo rehearsal?

The rehearsals were where everything happened. There we would play a theme over and over, dissecting all of its parts. Sometimes we would work with only one or two parts then add the others one by one. The reason for this was that each of the musicians would get to know all the other parts and then be much better equipped to blend in his individual voice. It was a great exercise in concentration and focus. However, Hermeto knew well when to break the rehearsal and go into something totally different, such as composing a new theme on the spot or launching a jam session so that everyone could relax.

He would often sit at the drums, and that would be a sign that we would start something wild and free. We would spend a lot more time, however, reading music than improvising. We would often work for months on arrangements that we would rarely, if ever, play onstage. Hermeto said that this was to form the musical ideas in our minds, a way to increase our repertoire of ideas, so that when we would play a solo, at last, there would be a lot more inspiration to draw from. Now as I teach my students, I understand how important that time was in my formation as a musician. It is amazing how some remark that Hermeto or some other fellow musician from O Grupo made surfaces now in my mind, and I see exactly how that transformed my way of hearing and playing music.

You mentioned that Hermeto made sure each player developed his own style and repertoire of ideas. How did he do that?

During my first years with O Grupo, Hermeto was often there with us, coaching, guiding, and playing with us. As time passed, he would leave us playing by ourselves, until he would come upstairs to the rehearsal room with a new piece for us to play. In the last two or three years I spent there, he would not rehearse with us, not even before a major tour. We would prepare the themes, and he would improvise over them during our performances. When he was not in the room, he was downstairs practicing the cavaquinho (small four-string guitar) or the button accordion and listening to soccer games on the radio, one of his favorite pastimes.

How did Hermeto channel all the energy of O Grupo on stage, with respect to entries, dynamics, meter, and nuance? Were there ever conventional rehearsals for these details?

All of our stage dynamics, cues, and a lot of the music was done by Hermeto on the spot. The only thing we knew was that we had to keep all of our attention on him because he might change the structure of a piece at anytime. This kept us always on our toes, and when we were surprised by what we were doing, so was the audience. The band was so tight that it was very hard for a listener to tell when we were playing written scores or when we were improvising.

A live performance with Hermeto must be very different from the live performances with Fourth World?

The differences between performing with Hermeto and with Airto are many, but the most important thing is that I feel it is a privilege and an honor to have had the chance to play with two of the most important musicians of this century. I admire them both, and have learned a lot from both of them. There has never been a "typical" concert with Hermeto. Our repertoire was quite big (from 30 to 50 working songs at one time), but we never knew which ones we would perform until he would call them.

Besides, he would often create new themes on the stage, and we would join him. His ability to create new music almost instantly never ceased to amaze me. The open sections were always a surprise, and Hermeto would often invite other musicians onstage to play with us. The band was super tight, due to our routine of rehearsals, six hours a day, five days a week. This generated a kind of telepathy among the band members, so we could almost predict when Hermeto would cue us to stop one arrangement and start another.

Playing with Airto and Fourth World has given me a whole new set of challenges. Airto is a fantastic drummer and percussionist. He is incredibly sensitive and intuitive in his playing. Up until the time I joined Fourth World, I was mainly a pianist. Suddenly I became a keyboardist as well. For me, this was like learning a totally new instrument. Airto has helped me a lot in discovering new sounds and ways to incorporate them in our sets. Even though our song lists are more structured with Fourth World, there are always free sections where we create fresh music in every performance. Airto has the power to conjure up energy and focus it on the audience. It is great to see how the public reacts to his pandeiro (tambourine) solo, no matter where in the world we might be. Both Airto and Flora Purim have played with the greatest musicians of the world, and their experience is reflected in the way they perform.

How is a pianist's approach and a keyboardist's different?

What I mean by being a keyboardist is that there are things that you can do on a keyboard that you could never do on the piano and vice-versa. I have been learning how to explore these possibilities. They include the use of samples, pads, blending sounds to create new colors, the use of pedals, aftertouch, and effects. I still need to go daily to the piano, however, and work on all those things that you can never do on keyboards.

There were some rather unusual O Grupo performances. Do any in particular stand out?

In one instance, in 1983 at a concert in Itabira, Minas Gerais, Hermeto collected all of our music folders two minutes before the show and told us that on that day no one was going to read anything. Instead, he composed all of the music we played onstage. He started on the piano then cued us in until the themes were in full swing. No one in the audience noticed what was going on. At other times, some spontaneous idea was so good that we would incorporate it in the next shows.

That was the case of the "Bandinhas." Once, in 1982, while playing at the IBAM theater in Rio, we started to leave the stage with piccolo, two saxes, tuba, and percussion and go out of the theater to the streets playing some themes that Hermeto had written for that line-up. The audience followed us outside. We paraded for a while and then went back in to finish the show. That proved to be such a hit that we ended up doing it at a great number of concerts all over the world. This created some extremely funny situations, such as our climbing aboard city buses, entering bars, and sometimes going miles away from the venue. At times we had literally thousands of people dancing behind us through the streets. The Pied Pipers...

So the "Bandinhas" were a group within the group?

The "Bandinhas" were like a portable version of our group. Instead of piano, bass, and drums we would play tuba (Itiberê), flute/piccolo (me), saxes (Hermeto and Carlos), and percussion (Márcio, Pernambuco, and Fábio). That line-up enabled us to actually march out of whatever venue we might be playing, go into the streets, and play while the crowds were following us. Hermeto penned a whole lot of compositions just for this formation. Some are like traditional maxixes and marches, others are like contemporary chamber music pieces. I transcribed a couple and played them with the Campinas Symphony Orchestra in 1993.

Jovino, there have been times when I'd be listening to a recording by another artist and all of a sudden....I'd be grinning ear to ear and swear I was hearing O Grupo. For example, didn't you guys play on Maria Bethânia's 1990 disc Canto do Pajé?

Yes, the whole Grupo played on the cut "Tomara," on the Bethânia CD. Hermeto wrote the arrangement, and I played piano and conducted the string section. I am also featured on Hermeto's arrangements of "Arrastão" by Edu Lobo and Vinícius de Moraes, "Modinha" by Jobim and Vinícius (available on the Songbook series on the Lumiar label from Brazil) and on "Marina" by Dorival Caymmi (on the Caymmi series, same label).

Hermeto's concept of The Sound of the Aura is hard for many listeners to grasp. Can you break it down a little?

Hermeto has broken down the barriers that define what music is and what it is not. His sensitive ears hear music in people's speech, in bird songs, in traffic noises, in industrial sounds. The curious thing is that once people hear what he does with these sounds, they too can only hear them as music. The Sound of the Aura is still in its beginning stages; there is so much that can be done with it. Can you imagine a film where the actors' dialogue is also the soundtrack? I am still preparing myself to be able to do more of this. It requires an ear sharp as a razor and intense concentration. Even though some other people have tried to do something similar, in my opinion, only Hermeto has succeeded in capturing the musical essence of speech.

Why is Hermeto recognized as one of the 20th century's most important composers in Europe but known only to a select audience -- primarily musicians -- in the United States?

Well, you know that in this country you are only considered to be someone in the music business if your CDs are in every store, and how many of them you sell, and if your video plays on MTV. Even though we made a lot of records with O Grupo, they are poorly distributed here and hard to find. Besides that, Hermeto never really got along well with record companies. They tend to consider his music something for the elite only and never promoted it like they should have. We played live to audiences all over the world, and we could see how the music touched people, no matter where we were. A lot of his music is actually stuff you can dance to, happy and with a lot of swing. When I produced Festa dos Deuses, it was meant to be distributed by Polygram in the US. But then Polygram said that the American public was not ready for this kind of music.

Do you agree with that?

When is the American public ever ready? I believe there is a tremendous lag time between the first performance of serious new music (Cage, Stravinsky, Pascoal) and the American public's acceptance, let alone appreciation of it. Americans are too dependent on the record companies to tell them what's OK.

Jovino, about three years ago you made Seattle your home. It was a dramatic climatic shift from Rio. What besides your studies of conducting prompted your move to the Pacific Northwest?

I cannot really explain the reasons that led me to move to Seattle. It was a very intuitive decision. I felt good when I played here with Hermeto in 1990 and even better when we returned one year later. I considered going to New York, Boston, Los Angeles, London, or Zurich. After visiting many schools, I realized that I could never teach or study in an institution where music is separated into categories such as "classical," "jazz," etc., not after what I had been exposed to with Hermeto. It was then, in 1993, that I got in touch with Julian Priester, the great trombonist and a teacher at Cornish. He told me how much they would like me to come here. Cornish is a school where the walls that separate musical styles are very thin, and I collaborate frequently with players and composers from every department. This is a very advanced place and has been the creative home of people like John Cage and Imogen Cunningham.

I came with my wife and two children, and I am very happy to live here. Of course, I travel a lot all over the world, and I get to meet a lot of interesting musicians, but I love my home base here. My study of conducting was never pursued with the intention of obtaining a degree or achieving fame as a "maestro." I wanted to learn the language of the orchestra, so that I could translate to a wider circle of musicians the musical concepts that I learned with Hermeto. I feel that I am now able to communicate with any musician, regardless of whether he is classically trained or does not read a note of music. As with everything else, this is an ongoing process and by getting involved in projects like The Rite of Spring, I expand my knowledge and fulfill my mission of making music a truly universal tool for growth.

Tell me about your re-orchestration of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Will you be conducting?

Since I first heard Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, I was impressed by its rhythmic richness. What I am trying to do is imagine that Igor is alive today and realizes how the resources available to a composer have evolved and that he can add these resources to the original ideas of the piece. For instance, when he wrote it in 1911, the only way you could have big sounds with an orchestra was by using a lot of brass and the usual symphonic percussion instruments. Now the concept of percussion has been brought to a new level by people like Airto Moreira. By using keyboards, we can get huge sounds that do not sound heavy and cumbersome. Today we also have more musicians who have been exposed to a wider variety of rhythms and who can retrieve the original grooves in The Rite.

It's incredible how the piece starts to sound now that I am playing it in my home on my sequencer. My idea is to create a performing core unit of up to 10 musicians who will tour and perform with local symphony orchestras. I'll be using the strings and some woodwinds from the original arrangement and working with dance companies and multimedia artists to generate the visual part. It is a big project, and it might take a while, but I am getting ready to do it. I know that this might stir up some "purists" who believe that a piece of music is made of concrete and should not be touched, but in my mind I can see old Igor smiling at the idea. Controversy is what his piece created when it was first performed. Maybe I should call it The Riot of Spring.

Which 20th century conductors have influenced you?

I cannot really tell you which conductors have influenced me, apart from Roger Nelson, my conducting professor at Cornish College in Seattle. I actually do not look at all at conductors when I hear orchestras playing. I try to hear how the music is being performed. For me, the best conductor is the one that does his job so well that he is almost transparent, becoming one with the music. When I studied conducting, I learned from a variety of sources about the techniques employed, but the core of my concept of music was formed during my years in Jabour, Rio, playing Hermeto's music.

That has prepared me to face any musical situation, in any kind of style or setting. I am not saying that I know everything -- that would be ridiculous and arrogant. What I am saying is that I have learned to see and hear music as one infinite field of possibilities without any walls or divisions between what people commonly call popular, or jazz, classical, folk, world, etc. Those are labels that music merchants use to put on bins at record stores. They should never be applied to a musician's brain. When you really learn music, you learn all music. In Hermeto's words, "Music is like the air and the water. It flows from here to there, changes its aspects, but its essence is timeless." It truly holds the world together.

Your students at Cornish College of the Arts must really appreciate a teacher with a professional career in progress. How does your touring with Fourth World and performing with The Jovino Santos Neto Quartet impact your students at the college? How do you like academia?

For me, it is a great opportunity to be able to teach and share my experiences with younger musicians. It brings to my mind all the remarks Hermeto and the other musicians in O Grupo would make way back when I was learning the basics. When you can see yourself in the two positions, teacher and pupil, at the same time, it gives you a great feeling. I only teach a few hours each week. Most of my time is spent composing, arranging, and practicing on my instruments. I often go on the road, performing mostly with Airto or as a solo pianist, and I play with my quartet here around Seattle. This is also a good source of inspiration for my students, since I speak about the reality of life as a touring and performing musician instead of only theory.

Are students at Cornish College hungry to learn Brazilian music? How do you structure your class?

I teach Latin Jazz Ensemble at the undergraduate level. Basically, I use this class to explore a variety of rhythms, and since it is a good size, I can try out all sorts of arrangements and orchestrations. It is very rewarding to see people who were not born in Brazil begin to understand and feel Brazilian rhythms such as baião, samba, maracatu, and frevo and be able to incorporate these patterns into their everyday playing. We are all excited about an upcoming performance in December at the College. I also teach students on a private basis, and here I go into other areas such as composition, arranging, and the basic concepts about being a musician.

Your philosophy of music and its role as a tool for transformation reminds me of the 1+1 theory of language acquisition.

When you are able to see music as a tool for transformation, you can put yourself on a never-ending path of evolution. I study music every day, and every day I find new aspects of it I had not seen before. Hermeto was a real inspiration for this path, because he wrote music for us to play that was just beyond what we were capable of at the moment. In the process of learning that particular piece, you developed a skill that you did not have before, and you added another item to your repertoire of musical ideas. After you convince yourself that music is a universal language, you realize that every musician is on his or her path of evolution. It does not really matter how far you are on that path. It is more important to feel that there is such a way and that you can improve your own skills through concentration and discipline.

The Stepping on White Sand CD (pieces for solo piano) really drew my attention to Hermeto's extraordinary harmonies. They are so beautifully exposed in this setting. When I tried to describe them to another musician, I was hard pressed. Eventually, I said that they were a cross between Charles Mingus and Igor Stravinsky.

It's always hard to explain Hermeto's harmonic concepts, even to other musicians. When asked how he developed his harmonic sense, Hermeto said that he used to hang around as a kid at his grandfather's blacksmith shop. There he used to pick up pieces of iron and hit them, and then he tried to emulate all the harmonics he had heard on his little button accordion. Remember that this was a place with no radio or even electricity. I believe that this fact shows how sensitive to sound his ears became. Because he does not follow the usual chord progressions in his music, it always sounds fresh and unexpected.

The other interesting thing about his chords is that even though they are quite elaborate, they are mostly composed of simple triads (three-note chords) stacked over each other. This approach is radically different from the one taught at most music schools. It offers a way to create music that does not use scales and modes. I have been showing this concept to my students here at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and it is amazing to see how they react when they discover that simple chords can create complex harmonies.

There are so many works to choose from. How did you select the pieces for the Stepping on White Sand project?

I basically decided to record those pieces that have become favorites of mine, music that I have been playing over the years. Some of them are actually just the piano part of an O Grupo arrangement. Hermeto always said that in his arrangements each individual part could be played as a solo, so I did just that. There are a lot more than those pieces. I play his compositions every day, and I am always surprised at how much beautiful music there is to be played. I am working now with Hermeto on a piano suite that he wrote in 1987, and which he is now re-working. It should last over 20 minutes when ready.

You don't record material that Hermeto has already recorded. I find that really interesting.

The reason I do not feel like recording music that Hermeto has already done is that there is so much that has not been done. Even so, I re-recorded the piece "Spock na Escada" (originally on Lagoa da Canoa, Município de Arapiraca, from 1984) with Mike Marshall, the mandolin player from California, on a CD that will be released on the Earth Beat label. We had a lot of fun doing that piece. We also did "Desencontro Certo." It also interests me to show Hermeto's other sides, as a composer for flute quartets, string quartets, big bands, and chamber ensembles, as well as music for solo instruments.

Will we ever have the opportunity to experience more than a fraction of Hermeto's musical treasures?

Since I left Hermeto's Group, in 1993, I made it one of my priorities to make his music available to musicians all over the world. I have always been a sort of librarian for his manuscripts, filing and organizing them. When I moved to Seattle, I started to prepare computer scores of some pieces. Now we are getting close to publishing a book with some of his solo piano music. This should be followed by some flute ensembles, string quartets, orchestral works, big band charts, and, of course, some of the arrangements from our group. I have over one thousand pieces on file, so this will take a lot of effort. I am, however, the one responsible for this, and I regard it as my mission to make sure that this amazing body of music gets passed on and heard. I am working closely with Hermeto on this project. We hope to have the first book out quite soon.

The Jovino Santos Neto Quartet is getting ready to release their first CD. What sorts of things can we look forward to? What will the disc be titled?

We are now in the pre-production stage of my first CD as a group leader. We were in the studio at the end of November and are planning a spring release on Liquid City Records -- a Seattle-based label with national and international distribution. For this first work I am preparing a batch of new compositions featuring Hans Teuber on flutes and saxophones, Chuck Deardorf on acoustic and electric basses, and Mark Ivester on drums and percussion, as well as myself on piano, flute, and keyboards. These guys are among the best musicians here in the Pacific Northwest. They have been playing my music for almost three years, and I am very pleased with our sound. We will record mostly my compositions and arrangements, but I want to include at least one piece by Hermeto. The record is not yet titled.

You're a superb flautist. How did you get involved with playing the instrument?

Having heard Hermeto's flute playing, I became very interested in learning the instrument. He helped me a lot, by giving me music to play that was so challenging that I am still learning every day from pieces he wrote over 15 years ago. It was also very inspiring to see him learning to play a new instrument. He did it with electronic keyboards, trumpet, drums, trombone, guitar, and a whole lot of other instruments he created himself. Playing several instruments is not about how many; it's about understanding the nature of each one and bringing that nature out as music.

I'm happy to hear you'll be playing flute on the quartet's disc. I've always been blown away by your flute playing with O Grupo.

Yes, I will be playing flute on this recording. There is one tune inspired by the Bandas de Pífanos of the Brazilian Northeast called "Utopinga" in which we do a flute duet with bass and percussion. I will also have some surprise guests. I believe that the timing is good for such a release.

Airto?

Airto will be playing some percussion and will also be involved with the sound and production of the project.

What are Bandas de Pífanos?

Banda de Pífanos could be translated as a fife band. These were ensembles with two bamboo flutes, zabumba, snare, and cymbals that were very popular in the Brazilian Northeast for a long time.

Can you describe some of the music on the quartet's new recording?

The music is the result of all the influences I have received in my life. Of course, there is the accent from the school where I studied (Hermeto's Group), but I have also been very inspired by the atmosphere I found here in Seattle and the willingness of the guys in the quartet to embrace the concepts I brought when I moved here. They are all great players and improvisers. I want to create something unique and very special. There are sambas, maracatus, frevos, chorinhos, marcha-ranchos, and many other rhythms in my compositions, and I keep writing more....

Contagious enthusiasm

Prior to my interview with Jovino, I spoke with mandolin virtuoso Mike Marshall, a musician known for his work with Stephane Grappelli, the David Grisman Quartet, Bela Fleck, and many others. Marshall recently finished recording a duet project with Jovino and had this to say about the versatile multi-instrumentalist:

What an amazing musician and a gold mine of musical inspiration. His work with Hermeto and all the guys in that group was some of the most inspiring music that I've ever come in contact with in any genre. What dedication to this creative genius those musicians had. A perfect moment in musical history where a brilliant mind is surrounded by young, eager talent and where the elements all came together to make these incredible artistic statements that will last forever.

For me to get as close as I have to Hermeto's music through Jovino is something that I will be eternally grateful for. His enthusiasm for the music seems to be boundless. It is as if even he had just discovered this music yesterday. He is completely willing to play this music with anyone at any time, to share the work and teach the music at whatever pace you can grasp it.

As for Jovino's own music, I really see it as a natural outgrowth of this incredibly fertile environment that he was a part of for so many years. His own music uses some of the same musical concepts as Hermeto's, but within this framework, he has found his own voice and is creating some truly unique work with his own beautiful signature.

To be able to play these duets with Jovino for my recording was an incredible inspiration. His enthusiasm is so contagious. We hit it off from the first notes that we played together. I would say that we hit it off even before that. Just talking with him on the phone before meeting I felt this kinship, this brotherhood that developed very early on and continues to deepen each time we are together, fueled by this incredible amount of mutual respect and love for the music. I only hope that more musicians and scholars will understand the importance of the gift that Jovino has to offer in terms of sharing his experiences with having worked with one of the true living geniuses of our time. It is really something to be around.

Bruce Gilman plays cuíca for Mocidade Independente Los Angeles, received his MA from California Institute of the Arts, and teaches English and ESL in Long Beach, California. You can reach him through his E-mail: cuica@interworld.net

Jovino's Alchemy

from BrazzilMagazine, August 1997

In an encore interview after touring Europe, working in London and Brazil, and recording his first CD as a group leader, Seattle-based musician Jovino Santos talks about his music, friends and insight. As for his new album he says, "For me, this is another opportunity to feel the universal power of music and to connect different places, peoples and cultures."

by Bruce Gilman

Last December, when Brazzil interviewed composer, flautist, and keyboardist Jovino Santos Neto, he spoke about his 15 year tenure as a producer and member of Hermeto Pascoal's O Grupo as well as his work with Airto and Flora Purim's group, Fourth World. We discussed his mission to disseminate the music of his mentor (Hermeto Pascoal) by means of cataloging and publishing Pascoal's enormous body of work and about Jovino's role as a college music teacher, symphony orchestra conductor, arranger, solo pianist, and band leader.

Many developments have taken place for this multi-faceted musician over the past nine months, and keeping in contact with him has been a little difficult. Jovino was either in London recording with Airto, touring Europe with Fourth World, working with Hermeto in Rio, creating soundscapes on the North Dakota plains, opening the show for Marisa Monte in San Francisco, or putting the finishing touches on his spellbinding new CD, Caboclo—his first release as a group leader. Jovino was about to retreat for a well-earned two week vacation with his family when I caught him at his home in Seattle, Washington state. There was much to talk about.

In June you were in Brazil working with Hermeto. How is Mestre Hermeto? What are his latest ventures?

Hermeto is doing great. When he turned 60 in June 1996, he had this inspiration to write one tune a day for a whole year, and he did exactly that. He showed me this pile of new music. Each sheet was dated and numbered, and every composition was different from the others. He completed this mission on the day after his performance at Central Park, in New York City, on June 22, 1997. He never skipped a day!

Which members of O Grupo did Hermeto bring to New York City for the Summerstage concerts?

The players in O Grupo who came to New York were Vinícius Dorim (sax/flute), André Gomes (piano), Itiberê Zwarg (bass), Márcio Bahia (drums), Fábio Pascoal (percussion), and Hermeto on everything else. Pernambuco (percussion) is still in the band, only he did not come to the U.S. this time.

Tell me about Hermeto's recent "Som da Aura" project.

I was contacted by Morgan Fisher, a British musician who lives in Japan, about doing a "Som da Aura" segment with Hermeto for a Japanese release called Miniatures for the Millennium. This will be a compilation album to celebrate the new millennium with 60 one-minute tracks by 60 artists. When I asked Hermeto about it, he suggested we use some sounds from the Japanese language. Well, Morgan found these great-sounding recordings of ancient Japanese vendors, and we chose one of a banana salesman. He announces his fruit and then starts bringing the price down to sell it quickly. I did the pre-production, the keyboard programming, and helped Hermeto record the segment. The result, called "Feira de Asakusa," will be released sometime in the near future in the Miniatures compilation.

I'm still surprised that many listeners know of Hermeto's work only from his compositions on the Sérgio Mendes projects. Do you know of any effort being made to make Hermeto's recordings more accessible in the United States?

Hermeto's recordings remain "harder to find than legs on a snake" as he likes to say. Even in Brazil, they are rare or impossible to find. I have seen a couple of them for sale at the http://www.cdnow.com site on the Web as well as http://www.brazilcd.com. The latest CD, Festa dos Deuses, has all but disappeared from the stores, even though it was released by Polygram in Brazil and in England.

Did you have an opportunity to perform any solo piano concerts while you were in Brazil?

I played solo piano in São Paulo, Rio, and Macaé, and also performed with Teco Cardoso (flute/saxes), Arismar do Espírito Santo (bass), and Caito Marcondes (percussion) in three different venues in São Paulo. It was great to be able to show my work in Brazil once again. I had a wonderful time and felt a very good response to the music. I did some interviews and also radio shows. I also had the chance to show my upcoming CD to Hermeto and the guys in his group, and they were quite pleased with what they heard. They said a lot of nice things about Hans, Chuck, and Mark, the Seattle guys in my band. I also did a workshop at the Villa-Lobos Institute in Rio.

Is the Villa-Lobos Institute a state foundation?

The Villa-Lobos Institute in Rio is funded by the state of Rio and provides music education at a low cost. For the past couple of years they have had a young director, Marcos Nogueira, who is a fan of contemporary music and had been to a few rehearsals at Hermeto's house. He has been scheduling interesting workshops, featuring Itiberê Zwarg and Márcio Bahia from Hermeto's band, and in June I presented a workshop.

What was the focus of your workshop?

The theme of my talk was: How to increase one's repertoire of rhythmic ideas by drawing from the natural wealth of Brazilian and global rhythms. There were students of all ages in attendance. It was a great experience for me.

Which 20th century Brazilian composers besides Villa-Lobos have affected your music?

Hermeto, Lorenzo Fernandes, Camargo Guarnieri, Radamés Gnatalli, and Guerra Peixe. I hope to present more of their extraordinary music here in North America.

Was your trip to Brazil an inspiration for your own work as a composer and arranger?

Of course. Every time I go to Brazil I get very inspired. Actually, the music I wrote shortly before going back home is very "Brazilian" in character, a reflection of my anticipation of being there after a year's absence. There is a new samba, "Mendanha," and a new waltz, "Rosa Cigana," which is a tribute to Pixinguinha's "A Rosa." Also, being there gave me new ideas for my project of re-dressing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, something that I have been working on for a while now.

Do you have plans to record "Mendanha" and "Rosa Cigana" with the Quarteto on the next CD?

At this point, it is too early to think about the repertoire for the next CD. It will probably be a live album. We are playing the new tunes as well as dozens of others that did not make it to the new CD. It is always a problem to choose the themes when we have so many, and when I keep writing more.

Caboclo is your first CD as a band leader. Are you happy with the results?

In general, I am very pleased with this first CD. I am fortunate to have such a great band. These incredible musicians who have embraced the music I wrote with love and dedication made it happen. Most of the basic tracks and solos were done in one take with all the interactions and telepathy happening naturally. Afterwards I added some discrete keyboards to color the textures as well as the organ and the accordion. I am thankful to Liquid City Records for making it possible for me to produce the record with all the ideal technical conditions.

We recorded everything in the analog format with Daniel Protheroe, a fantastic engineer who had made a few records with Airto and Flora in the eighties. Airto was going to record with us here, but we had a heavy snowstorm, and he could not make it. We went on without him, and in February I flew to London with the tapes. Over a period of two days Airto added his special sounds and creativity to all the group tracks.

His choice of sounds and rhythms was amazing and added a lot to our music. After that, we sent the mixed product to Bob Katz for mastering in Florida, and his input helped a lot. He suggested small changes in the sequence of songs that make a big difference.

My understanding is that a Caboclo is an Indian ancestral spirit who returns to earth to aid humanity. Does this title infer anything about the music on the new disc or about your philosophy of music in general?

There are many ways to interpret Caboclo; that's why I chose the title. One of them is an Indian warrior spirit who makes himself present in some Umbanda rituals. Another is the name given to the common folk in Northern Brazil who are the product of the racial and cultural mixing of European (Portuguese), African, and native Brazilian populations. While remaining uniquely Brazilian, there is a wide range of cultural traits that these people exhibit. For an in-depth anthropological analysis of the formation of the Brazilian people, I refer you to the excellent book by the late Darcy Ribeiro, O Povo Brasileiro—Formação e Sentido do Brasil.

Anyway, my intention in choosing this title and concept was to draw a parallel between the racial mixture that produced the Brazilian people and the mixture of styles that gave rise to Brazilian music. Again, here are European, African, and indigenous elements combining to create something rich and unique. My point is that this mixing process is not finished. That is why we are playing universal music with roots in the Brazilian musical landscape, but without the pretense of re-creating "authentic" music.

We are not ethnomusicologists; instead we are contemporary musicians creating something new from a rich mother lode of rhythms, harmonies, and melodies. I arrived at this idea when I considered my own ancestry—Portuguese, English, French, American, Arab, Black, and Indian, among others—as well as the universal character of the music that I was exposed to while playing with Hermeto Pascoal.

Did you play material from Caboclo when the Quarteto opened for Marisa Monte in San Francisco?

Yes, the Quarteto did play a lot of tunes from Caboclo at the Maritime Hall on June 21, but we also did a special arrangement of "Um a Zero" as a special homage to the 100th anniversary of Pixinguinha, which is being celebrated this year.

How did the audience receive your music? Were you pleased with the response?

I think we did very well. Of course, we were only borrowing Marisa Monte's audience for a short while. But for us it was a great opportunity to have 1500 pairs of ears to sample our musical brew. We chose high-energy, fast-paced tunes to catch their attention, and they responded quite well. Now we are preparing the CD release concerts, and we will be back in the Bay Area as well as other West Coast locations. We will also be touring Europe in early 1998, and I am trying to take the Quarteto to Brazil sometime soon.

Did Hermeto write "Viva o Rio de Janeiro" for the new disc?

It was composed by Hermeto in 1989, and it quickly became one of the all-time favorites of the Grupo because of its happy samba feel and because players can solo nicely over the changes. We recorded the original arrangement as Hermeto wrote it. Actually, this tune was unnamed for all these years (as is most of Hermeto's music), and he only put a title to it when I needed one for the CD cover.

Its spirit is very Carioca (from Rio). How did you achieve that particular tuning for the surdo?

The surdo sound on the recording was made by Airto using his pandeiro with tape over the jingles and super close miking for the right tone.

What was your concept for the tune "Caboclo"?

I wanted this song to reflect the rich mixture that goes into the formation of the Brazilian people as well as in Brazilian music. Then the idea of re-creating a feira, or street market, came to me. I had some feira sounds that I had recorded on the street near Hermeto's house where I used to live in Jabour, Rio. And once back here in Seattle, I went to the Pike Place Market where there are a lot of vendors selling fish, fruit, and a lot more and also recorded their sounds. Then I assembled all that using my sampler, thus creating a "universal feira" where much is going on —buying, selling, people meeting, arguing, joking, etc. The theme was written in London last year using as a guideline some repentes, or improvised poetry, that I found in a book printed in 1936 called Alma Nordestina. I used the 5-verse stanzas as a template for the melody and the rest happened nicely during recording.

That banda de pífano intro juxtaposed with the street sounds is remarkable. And the soloing, wow! Do you play accordion much?

I borrowed an accordion to play the theme. In the intro I play zabumba, Mark is on triangle, and Hans and I play on two funky PVC plastic flutes (fifes) that a friend in Recife gave him last year. The way Hans's sax solo flows into the piano solo was totally unplanned, giving the tune a very loose feel that stills rocks with a solid groove.

"Intro" and "Hoping for the Day" reminded me a lot of the groups Bill Evans lead and especially of the great bass player Scott LaFaro.

This is a jazzy waltz with a really sweet melody that I wrote a couple of years ago, and I love the way Chuck interprets it on the acoustic bass. The piano intro was completely improvised in the studio. It's one of those tunes that people keep humming long after they hear it. Besides, I like the idea that it gives a ray of hope and happiness to whoever listens to it.

Hermeto's influence is unmistakable on "Chorelético." Did you write this when you were playing with him?

This chorinho was composed back in 1981, and the title comes from Pernambuco who had nicknamed me "Homelético" or the "Electric Man" for always being so energetic. Even though rhythmically it is a straight choro, the harmony is quite different, reflecting all the new chords I was learning while playing with Hermeto. I wanted Airto to play the pandeiro, but instead he suggested a pandeiro rhythm and played on a whole variety of small percussion instruments. The end was supposed to be a fade-out, but we all loved the way it developed so naturally that we left it to the "last drop."

It's so rare to hear frevos recorded these days. Is "Boa Viagem Pra Olinda" an older tune?

This frevo is quite recent. The title refers to a day last year when I started a Sunday by going to Boa Viagem beach in Recife, then going up to Olinda to see a maracatu group playing in the square. What a day! This cut has no improvised solos; instead I wrote an arrangement that attempts to describe the feeling of moving from one place to another and going through different moods. In the middle, I quote (jokingly) from the "Zé Pereira" Carnaval theme.

"Metamorph" is one of the wildest, most angular choros I've heard.

Yes, it is a crazy tune that starts with an ostinato left-hand pattern and changes (hence the name) to a straight ahead choro. I also used to play it with Airto and Fourth World, so he was at home with the hairpin turns in the arrangement.

What prompted your decision to leave Fourth World?

I had a great time during the almost three years I worked with Airto and Flora. I learned a lot from playing with such a master as Airto, and I had the opportunity to show my compositions and arrangements to a wide variety of audiences. Nevertheless, we were playing basically the same material during this period of time because the logistics of getting together and rehearsing made it very hard to present anything new. We felt our paths going separate ways as my own work as a piano soloist and group leader started to evolve.

It was a friendly dissolution though. I am very fond of Flora and Airto, and I'm grateful for having had the opportunity of working together. We had some really special moments on the road. As you know, Airto is featured as a guest artist on Caboclo, and his musical contribution made a big difference to the Quarteto's sound. I would love to work with him more in the future.

With Airto and Flora in Santa Barbara, California, and you in Seattle, Washington, a rehearsal could certainly create problems. Is "Song for a New Home" about your move to the Northwest?

Yes, this was written after our move from Rio to Seattle. The whole song is based on a simple riff that came to me as I was strolling through the zoo in Bern, Switzerland. I built all these lines around it and wrote a four part horn arrangement that Hans overdubbed. This is one of the tunes in which I play the Hammond organ.

That big Hammond B3 on "Sete Penas" took me back a few years. How did you arrive at the idea of combining that warm sound with the tune's odd meter?

A jazzman from Brazil finds a home in Seattle

Review of Balaio by Egídio Leitão, April 2001

This interview was posted on the student section of Cornish College of the Arts' Web site

Journey into Music with Jovino Santos Neto by Amber Flame

Review printed in The Oakland Express (Oakland, CA) of November 10, 2000

by Andrew Bourcier

JOVINO SANTOS NETO QUINTETO

at Yoshi's, Oakland, Monday, November 6

Canto do Rio review

Canto do Rio review from www.jazznow.com April 2004

Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto

Canto Do Rio

Liquid City Records LQC 34453

Hearsay from Jazz Times, March '04

Review of SERENATA, by Don Heckman

Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2003

rating: 3 1/2 stars

Masterful tribute to Brazilian master

Sorcerer's Apprentice

from Brazzil magazine, april 1996

by Bruce Gilman

Contagious enthusiasm

Jovino's Alchemy

by Bruce Gilman

Journey into Music with Jovino Santos Neto
by Amber Flame