Courtney Pine

Hermeto Pascoal turns frogs and kettles into jazz, exits at 89 with no regrets

Hermeto Pascoal, dead at 89, spends decades shredding the boundaries of Brazilian music by turning riverbeds, kettles and glass bottles into instruments, composing orchestral jazz while echoing frogs and church bells from his rural youth.

Self-taught and dubbed “the Sorcerer,” he punches Miles Davis one day and performs five-hour sets the next, yet always channels his birthplace's sonic chaos as if orchestrating a feijoada—with tambourines, accordions and birds for percussion.