Instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and conductor. Born in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, in 1932, he is considered one of the most versatile and influential jazz musicians in Brazil. Although he has always revealed a great facility for improvisation, his mastery of the jazz and popular repertoires is supported by a solid classical background. He studied piano, harmony, counterpoint, composition, and orchestration with several renowned musicians and composers in Brazil, a training that is reflected in the imagination and formal complexity of his many arrangements and original compositions. In the late 1950s he worked as the official orchestrator and arranger of the Rádio Nacional, traveling with several of its musicians throughout Brazil and abroad. He has performed as a clarinetist with several orchestras in Brazil, and as a saxophonist with renowned jazz ensembles throughout Brazil and Latin America. He was one of the participants in the historical Bossa Nova Festival at the Carnegie Hall in New York, and received the Prêmio Sharp as the best popular music instrumentalist of 1992, among several other awards throughout his career. He founded and directed a great variety of chamber and orchestral ensembles, to many of which he contributed with original compositions. He currently teaches at the Instituto Villa-Lobos in Rio de Janeiro.

Selected Works

• Fantasia Urbana, for alto sax and orchestra (2000)