Brazilian jazz among the trees
Pianist Jovino Santos Neto takes an arboreal approach to music
Trees figure prominently in the creative life of Jovino Santos Neto, literally and metaphorically.
The Brazilian pianist had just finished a degree in biology in 1977 when he joined a new band launched by the bewitching multiinstrumentalist and composer Hermeto Pascoal. An iconic figure in Brazil since the 1960s — Miles Davis recorded two of his compositions on his 1971 album “Live-Evil” and called him “one of the most important musicians on the planet”— Pascoal spent months at a time rehearsing with his band in the rainforest.
“I never worked one day in my life as a biologist, and it turned out I was playing with the guy most connected to nature. He evokes animals, trees and the environment, but he’ll also work with the sounds of a factory or traffic,” says Santos Neto, 63, whose Bay Area appearances begin tonight with his quartet, which includes bassist Peter Barshay, drummer David Flores and percussionist Ami Molinelli, plus Dillon Vado on vibraphone.
Tonight’s sold-out show, a double bill with violinist Timba Harris and guitarist Gyan Riley’s Duo Probosci, is part of the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley’s Redwood Grove Summer Concert Series, which includes a preconcert talk at the botanical garden’s Julia Morgan Hall on his arboreal
musical concept, an approach to harmony that developed out of his years with Pascoal.
“When Hermeto started to explain his music, I found that some of the best models to illustrate his ideas came from nature,” Santos Neto says. “Trees are perfect visualization guides.”
Building on Pascoal’s musical approaches, Santos Neto has looked to concepts from systems theory about the relationship between living beings and their environments. “We’re primates who had a prior existence in trees, and the idea
of moving through the tree canopy, what’s called brachiation, is a concept that can apply to music, especially in improvisation,” he says. “You’re moving from branch to branch, and you don’t have time to stop.”
He credits the summers he’s spent playing amid the La Honda redwoods at Jazz Camp West, where he’s been on faculty for nearly two decades, with providing the ideal environment to refine his arboreal ideas. But it was another sylvan setting that led to tonight’s gig.
UC Botanical Garden Director Eric Siegel, a pianist
with a deep love for jazz and Brazilian music, attended California Brazil Camp in Cazadero last summer. He signed up for the session because Pascoal was on faculty, and ended up spending a lot of time with Santos Neto, a longtime Brazil Camp teacher.
“For an hour and a half every morning, I’d join Jovino’s sessions where he played Hermeto’s recordings and told stories about working with him,” Siegel says. “He was also writing music that was just incredible. During the course of this, he mentioned his interest
in arboreal music. I said, ‘We’ve got trees. We’ve got music. Come on down and do your thing.’ ”
Santos Neto’s other Bay Area shows this month include a performance with his quartet and Vado at San Jose’s Art Boutiki on Friday, and a duo concert with Brazilian guitarist-composer Ricardo Peixoto at Berkeley’s Hillside Club on June 30.
A Seattle resident since 1993, Santos Neto moved to Washington to study at Cornish College of the Arts; by the next year he’d been hired as a professor in the music program. He’s established a distinct identity as a bandleader and composer apart from Pascoal, releasing a series of strikingly beautiful Brazilian jazz albums on the Adventure Music label.
But he’s never shied away from his formative relationship with the man known in Brazil as O Bruxo (the Wizard), including a 2003 collaboration with mandolin master Mike Marshall, “Serenata” (Adventure Music), the first album devoted to Pascoal’s music not performed by the composer himself.
Santos Neto’s latest release, “Guris” (Adventure Music) pairs him with the brilliant 41-year-old pianist and composer André Mehmari on a program celebrating Pascoal’s 80th birthday. Pascoal joins them on several pieces, including the tune made famous by Miles Davis, “Igrejinha” (Little Church). In the alchemical spirit of O Bruxo, Santos Neto plays harmonium on the track and Pascoal himself contributes on tea kettle “so the little church is under water, bubbling,” Santos Neto says.
“André is a generation younger, and he grew up listening to Hermeto’s band I was in. It was just me and him in his new studio in his big house, five minutes outside São Paulo in the rainforest.”