Airto Moreira facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Airto Moreira
Moreira in concert in 2007
Background information
Birth name	Airto Guimorvan Moreira
Born	(1941-08-05) August 5, 1941 (age 83) Itaiópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, Brazilian jazz, pop, baião
Occupation(s)	Musician, bandleader, composer
Instruments	Drums, percussion
Years active	1954–present
Labels	One Way, CTI, Arista, Warner Music Japan
Associated acts	Flora Purim, Return to Forever, Miles Davis, Hermeto Pascoal, Heraldo do Monte

Airto Guimorvan Moreira (born August 5, 1941) 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, Return to Forever, Weather Report and Santana.

Biography
Awards
Discography
- As leader
- As sideman
Filmography
See also

Biography

Airto Moreira at Paul Masson Harvest Jazz Festival, Saratoga CA 10/3/81

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 studied with Moacir Santos in Los Angeles. He then moved to New York where he began playing regularly with jazz musicians, 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 was soon called jazz fusion. Moreira participated in several of the most important projects of this emerging musical form, and stayed with Davis for about two years.

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 (1971). He left Weather Report (replaced by Dom Um Romão and Muruga Booker for their Sweetnighter album) 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, Däfos, 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 (along with fellow professor of ethnomusicology Halim El-Dabh), 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.

In 2022 it was announced via the Flora Purim & Airto Moreira Facebook page that Airto was suffering severe health problems and that wife Flora was now his full-time caregiver. A GoFundMe page was set up by their daughter Niura with the aim of raising funds to move Airto to a more suitable care facility. As of July 2023, almost $45,000 has been raised.

Awards

Moreira was voted the number one percussionist in "Down Beat Magazine's Critics Poll" for the years 1975 through 1982 and most recently in 1993.
In September 2002, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso added Moreira and Purim to the "Order of Rio Branco", one of Brazil's highest honors.