Airto Moreira


Airto Guimorvan Moreira is a Brazilian jazz drummer and percussionist. He is married to jazz singer Flora Purim, and their daughter Diana Moreira is also a singer. Coming to prominence in the late 1960s as a member of the Brazilian ensemble Quarteto Novo, he moved to the United States and worked in jazz fusion with Miles Davis and Return to Forever.

Biography

Airto Moreira was born in Itaiópolis, Brazil, into a family of folk healers, and raised in Curitiba and São Paulo. Showing an extraordinary talent for music at a young age, he became a professional musician at age 13, noticed first as a member of the samba jazz pioneers Sambalanço Trio and for his landmark recording with Hermeto Pascoal in Quarteto Novo in 1967. Shortly after, he followed his wife Flora Purim to the United States.
After moving to the US, Moreira began playing regularly with jazz musicians in New York, including the bassist Walter Booker. Through Booker, Moreira began playing with Joe Zawinul, who in turn introduced him to Miles Davis. At this time Davis was experimenting with electronic instruments and rock and funk rhythms, a form which would soon come to be called jazz fusion. Moreira was to participate in several of the most important projects of this emerging musical form. He stayed with Davis for about two years, touring and participating in the creation of the seminal fusion recording Bitches Brew.
Shortly after leaving Davis, Moreira joined other Davis alumni Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous in their group Weather Report, playing percussion on their first album. He left Weather Report to join fellow Davis alumnus Chick Corea's new band Return to Forever. He played drums on Return to Forever's first two albums: Return to Forever and Light as a Feather in 1972.
Moreira was a contributor to many of Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart's world music/percussion albums in Rykodisc's The World collection, including The Apocalypse Now Sessions, Dafos, Supralingua, and Planet Drum, which won a World Music Grammy in 1991. He can be heard playing congas on Eumir Deodato's 1970s space-funk hit "Also sprach Zarathustra" on the album Prelude.
Moreira has played with many of the greatest names in jazz including Cannonball Adderley, Lee Morgan, Paul Desmond, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Al Di Meola, Zakir Hussain, George Duke and Mickey Hart.
In addition to jazz concerts and recordings, he has composed and contributed music to film and television, played at the re-opening of the Library of Alexandria, Egypt, and taught at UCLA and the California Brazil Camp.
In 1996, Moreira and his wife Flora Purim collaborated with P.M. Dawn on the song "Non-Fiction Burning" for the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Rio, produced by the Red Hot Organization.

Instruments

Moreira has played pandeiro, cuica, congas, bongos, shekere, talking drum, tambourine, maracas, shaker, triangle, cowbell, caxixi, drums, Afoxé, tubular bells, snare drum, berimbau, temple blocks, ganza, surdo, bell tree, wood blocks, jam block, mark tree, cymbals, cabasa, bass drum, timbales, gong, tamborim, drum machine, vibraphone, djembe, floor tom, whistles, conch shell, tom-tom, bells, tabla, hi-hat, sleigh bells, agogo bells, guiro, marimba, castanets and beat box.

Awards

As leader

With Sambalanco Trio
With Cannonball Adderley
With Gato Barbieri
With Stanley Clarke
With Chick Corea
With Miles Davis
With Paul Desmond
  • From the Hot Afternoon
  • Summertime
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water
With George Duke
  • Feel
  • I Love the Blues, She Heard My Cry
  • The Aura Will Prevail
  • Liberated Fantasies
  • A Brazilian Love Affair
  • Night After Night
  • Snapshot
  • Is Love Enough?
  • Duke
  • In a Mellow Tone
With David Friesen
  • Amber Skies
  • Other Times Other Places
  • Departure
  • Ancient Kings
With Stan Getz
With Astrud Gilberto
  • I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do
  • Gilberto with Turrentine
  • Now
With Johnny Hammond
  • Breakout
  • Wild Horses Rock Steady
  • The Prophet
With Mickey Hart
  • The Apocalypse Now Sessions
  • At the Edge
  • Planet Drum
  • Mickey Hart's Mystery Box
  • Supralingua
With Freddie Hubbard
  • First Light
  • Sky Dive
  • Polar AC
With Bob James
  • H
  • Snowbird
  • Sign of the Times
With Antonio Carlos Jobim
With Hubert Laws
With Duke Pearson
With Flora Purim
  • Butterfly Dreams
  • Stories to Tell
  • 500 Miles High
  • Open Your Eyes You Can Fly
  • Encounter
  • Nothing Will Be As It Was...Tomorrow
  • That's What She Said
  • Everyday Everynight
  • Carry On
  • The Midnight Sun
  • Speed of Light
  • Welcome Back '95
  • Perpetual Emotion
With Wayne Shorter
  • Super Nova
  • Native Dancer
  • High Life
With Paul Simon
  • Paul Simon
  • There Goes Rhymin' Simon
  • Hearts and Bones
With Stanley Turrentine
  • Salt Song
  • The Baddest Turrentine
  • The Sugar Man
With Grover Washington Jr.
With others'