Airto Moreira
THIS DESCRIPTION OR BIOGRAPHY IS INCOMPLETE. IT IS CENTRED AROUND THE PERIOD OF THE ARTIST'S WORK WITH MELT2000/B&W MUSIC
Having recorded two classic albums, Return To Forever and Light As A Feather - both featuring the vocal pyrotechnics of Flora Purim - Chick Corea decided to pursue a more electric direction and Airto and Flora went their own way. For the past decades, the couple have been practically inseparable.
Since the critically acclaimed Fingers in 1973, Airto has recorded some 20 solo albums and has contributed to live and recorded work by Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Cannonball Adderley, Carlos Santana, Gato Barbieri, Herbie Hancock, Gil Evans, The Crusaders, Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, Chicago, The Brecker Brothers, The Average White Band, Quincy Jones, Chaka Khan and Al Dimeola, to name but a few. He has also contributed to the sound tracks of many major movies including The Exorcist, Apocalypse Now, King Of The Gypsies, Blue Mirage, and Last Tango In Paris.
1991 saw the release of the album Planet Drum, the culmination of a long standing friendship with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, whom he first met when the Miles Davis band opened for The Dead at the Fillmore West in 1970. Planet Drum topped Billboards World Music Chart for almost six months and won the first Grammy ever presented in the category of Best World Music Recording. In the same year Airto also won the Grammy for Best Live Jazz Recording for his collaboration with the late Dizzie Gillespie on the album United Nations Orchestra. The following year, Airto again joined forces with Mickey Hart to produce a ground-breaking album of healing music, The Other Side Of This.
In 1993 Airto and Flora joined the brilliant guitarist, Jose Neto and the keyboards and reeds supremo, Gary Meek to form Fourth World a highly danceable Latin jazz/rock band whose eponymous first album marked Airto's first involvement with B&W Music/MELT 2000.
Also released is Killer Bees(BW041), recorded with a freeform supergroup, The Gods of Jazz, featuring old friends including Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Mark Egan and Herbie Hancock as well as Flora and Gary Meek. Airto together with Robert Trunz are the prime mover of the 1994 Outernational Meltdown project.
Airto explored what he calls 'Creative Percussion'. In concert, using a large table on rolling legs that holds a variety of strange implements, only some of which are actually percussion instruments, but might also include such items as a metal rack from a refrigerator, rubber hoses, wooden shoes, springs attached to tin cans, and shakers made from beer cans with shot pellets inside. He is always on the look out for anything that can make a unique sound and it is this attitude that will always keep Airto creative and young at heart.
Although Airto and Flora Purim have travelled the world constantly for more than 25 years, Airto's love for the music and people of Brazil, takes him home regularly to visit family, musicians and spiritual guides. Airto's commitment to spiritualism started at an early age and for the past ten years he has been practising Spiritual Healing Music: the opening of new channels in communication between artists and audience or, in Airto's words, "creating a true feeling of friendship and enjoyment that is so needed in the world right now" "Until Airto came to the US in 1968, a percussionist was someone with a conga drum and a frilly shirt. Airto brought the role into the foreground of music." Phil Johnson, The Independent.
"I've always been a skin beater...I can't be a legend, I'm too active for that." Airto Moreira
Brazilian by birth and a musical spiritual healer by faith, Airto Moreira is universally recognised as the World's Greatest Percussionist lightly. For 25 years he has consistently topped the percussion category of readers and critics polls in such magazines as Downbeat, Jazz Times, and Modern Drummer. Airto has been practising Spiritual Healing Music: opening new channels in communication between artists and audience or, in Airto's words, "creating a true feeling of friendship and enjoyment that is so needed in the world right now".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airto_Moreira
