​He did and Moacir wrote an amazing arrangement for the song "Capim" […]. We spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, we hung out with Moacir, we ate a feijoada at his house. […] Mine second contact with Moacir was even more interesting, in 1985, in a tour with Djavan we played in a Jazz Festival in New York, […] and we came back with the idea of producing a jazz festival in Brazil. That was when the Free Jazz Festival appeared, since then I am one of the festival curators, which changed names throughout time. [...] for the first night of the first Free Jazz we came up with idea of putting two important names of the Brazilian music, Radamés Gnattali and Moacir Santos. Then Moacir said, "I want to play with Luizão Maia, Wilson das Neves and I will be coming with my piano player, Frank Zottoli, then you set up the rest of the band". I set up the woodwinds, he wanted three woodwinds, I was one on them and I call Bidinho and Zé Carlos, I also called Rique Pantoja to play keyboard and two percussion players, Café and Marçal.

[…] This experience was outstanding, to play with Moacir Santos, it was very moving!

I believe Moacir was a musician that was born with his music, […] it is quite different from everything. […] Even his choros had a choro structure but always with something innovative, he had a really personal thing since very early. […] He was a thorough guy and with a deep musicality to an extent that when you talked with him, it seemed like he talked about everything but music.

[…] I never saw Ganga Zumba, O Beijo, Seara Vermelha, I never saw none of the films Moacir composed music for. For me it was a gap, something that was missing […], I believe you took a great area because no one never dealt with it, also because talking about Moacir is a new thing, fifteen year ago no one knew who he was.

​Recently, I read a biography of Moacir written by Andrea Ernest Dias, and the book is wonderful because it increased my admiration for him. His life story, coming from the hinterlands of Pernambuco and how things happened, it’s a story […] for a movie. He was a very sweet person, very strong and kind for having shared his knowledge with so many people. So many people have studied with Moacir [...] I wanted to have been his apprentice. Nowadays, I think that I’m attempting to at least capture what he left us and I'm very encouraged, for example, by this project we are talking about now.For us here at Itaú Cultural, within this new format of the Rumos project, on which we worked intensely so that we could be instigated by the creativity of people. We have travelled throughout Brazil talking a bit about this during the application period. We wanted people to take their most sensitive and dearest ideas […] out of their drawers, their heads, in a certain way, and apply. There were no restrictions to the projects.

We received more than 15,000 applications from throughout Brazil and from other countries as well. This project, which dives into the work of Moacir, was one of the hundred selected ideas.

Close to a hundred selected projects out of approximately 15,000 applications. I also think that this selection process, which was quite intense as you can imagine […] it was […] this project focusing on the film work, Moacir’s music for film, it captivated all of us with its importance, evident from what I’ve mentioned about Moacir. Almost everyone, even those who didn‘t have a deep knowledge of his work or who were not musicians, know the importance of this man, this musician, this powerful Brazilian. And about the specificity even of this research. So I also believe that in this selection process, going from 15,000 or so to about a hundred, we can also understand the importance this project has for the institution and for the Rumos project.

​And Cacá had this generosity, this vision, this love for this country […] and Moacir Santos is a genius. So, who is going to compose the film music for Ganga Zumba? Moacir Santos! I didn’t know Moacir Santos. Moacir Santos was not part of the Bossa Nova movement, and Cacá brought him […]. And he masterly made one of the most beautiful music of all the films that I have ever made! A film music: [sings the melody of "Nanã"], sung by Nara Leão, who was married to Cacá in those days. And Cacá never abandoned Moacir. Moacir felt the need for even greater challenges and went to live in the United States. However, the enjoyment and the opportunity we have of knowing Moacir through his music, his film music, and his projects, we also had through Solano Trindade, of who little is mentioned.

Solano Trindade was a poet. We had this closeness, without having it, differently from what we had with Solano Trindade, this much closer opportunity to have to spent time with Moacir Santos, and we did spend time with him, starting with Ganga Zumba. [...] He was certainly, in terms of film scores and his own music, after Villa-Lobos, on the same level as Pixinguinha: he was a genius, he was a genius! And we earned so much […]. It’s a pity people know so little of him, even today, of who he was, who he is […] and who left us this great fortune, this great wealth of music.

​At that time, I was already working with Zé Nogueira, and he had had a history with him. [In those days], I was doing projects and using the Lei Rouanet, […] I said, "That interests me a lot, let's talk about it!" Then we joined, and we came up with the Ouro Negro project. The first contact I had with Moacir was by phone. We had to transcribe all the Coisas arrangements. In 2000, Petrobrás funded the project, and we started the recording sessions in the beginning of 2001. Before that, we needed to talk to Moacir because of the transcribing process, we wound split [the work].[We was] trying to understand the instrumental combinations of the arrangements: trombone with tenor sax, sometimes alto sax with French horn […]. Therefore, it was insane, we worked a few months, three intense months of listening. Zé Nogueira had the [original] Coisas tape, which he copied. When Roberto Quartin, who owned Forma, which released Coisas, sold his label to Phillips, at the time, between 1969, 1970 he handed to Phillips, naively, everything he had.

 He handed a big box containing, besides the original Coisas arrangements, the tape […], and all other, there was Baden, Luiz Eça, many things, and he handed all the papers along with the phonograms. Then what happens in Brazil that has no memory? Now, thanks to us all, it will have, if God wills. They threw it away and only kept the phonograms. There must be somethings there that we couldn’t even know. I don’t know where those files are. Well, we had the original tape, and it was really difficult to understand the instrumental combinations, the mutes, but we indeed accomplished our goal. I can tell you that this work changed my life. I learned so much listening and writing, because we had to transcribe the bass line, the drum rhythms, and it changed the manner I looked at music. I interacted with Moacir during six years, it was almost like a father-son relationship, with fights and everything that a father-son relationship has. And it’s funny that we didn’t had proper music conversations, he talked more about philosophy, theology […].

I said everytime, "someone is helping us, it’s so good. It’s so good, the musicianship, an incredible thing". Then when the end of the day arrived, my wife was there and already knew, due to an e-mail from Moacir [Jr.]. It was very moving, me speaking every time that someone was helping us there and then we know about him in the end of the session, it was awfully sad.

[About the transcribed scores] I believe we need to do it! Because Moacir is a musician that deserves to be at pantheon of great, he deserves to be by the side of Tom Jobim, Ari Barroso, Dorival Caymmi. This is something that I set out for the eternity, we need this memory and it’s great that young people are doing it too. For him, everything was sacred, dealing with it was sacred, he treated it a sacred thing, and this penetrated on us. At least in the sensible ones, and good musicians are generally sensitives.

Cool, I am here for anything, and best luck for the project!

​But I didn’t have a clue, me, a film music scholar, I didn’t have a clue about the importance of Moacir Santos as a cinema musician, a cinema composer. It is impressive to see how his métier adapts itself to the audiovisual and how he leads well his film scores, so, it was a great pleasure to supervise this work. And it was also a great pleasure to see what we all expect during the academic life: that our work passes through the university walls and conquer the world, conquer the audience. Therefore, when we research a composer like Moacir Santos, we do it to bring him to the public, for the people to listen to him, for the people to be aware of his work. So, from the moment that this work, that is a Master’s dissertation, become a public project, with film exhibitions, a public discussion, outside of the academy, of Moacir Santos’ work, it will certainly contribute to a better knowledge of his work by the public.

In a way rescuing his name nowadays, that as I said, did not acquire the importance and the awareness of the Brazilian public that he did deserve when he was alive. It is a Moacir Santos rescue, and some kind of debt we have toward him, toward his memory, taking this project to the public, exhibit it and let the people to know him better, get involved, and enjoy the work of this great Brazilian composer.

​And he had a very strong personal and spiritual orientation, meaning he was a very committed guy. There is a way to everything, a solution for everything, creativity for everything, it’s presence of mind and patience. He easily transmitted all these human qualities of the highest level. And his classes were like parables, he had stories to tell and he loved to talk. Sometimes you arrived in the classroom and he would play a C note, "Carlos, what do you hear after this?" And I would answer: "You talking!" Then he would talk up a storm, telling us one of the many stories he had. I think all this was priceless for my personal, professional and musical education… I feel blessed.I believe this current that has been flowing since the 1990s regarding the study of Moacir’s work is extremely important. So many people, so many students, academics and musicians, have been perpetuating Moacir’s work. Allow me to make a comparison to what was made in the 1980s and 1990s with the work of Tom Jobim, which spread Bossa Nova around the world.

I believe Moacir is now being discovered more and more, that is, expanding the horizons of musicians and the public in general that have been getting in touch with his work. So I think that any project that preserves his scores, brings back…re-releasing films, CDs. Anything that can increase this demand, or the ease for searching for Moacir Santos’ work is extremely important for Brazilian culture, without a doubt.

​It is also great that the project was born from an academic research and with the present support of Rumos, we managed to leave the university and reach a broader and more diversified audience.The project basically consists of the publication of a series of transcribed scores from some of the Brazilian films that Moacir worked on in the early 1960s, for now. Besides that, it also contemplates other types of production on this work, like some texts, some analysis of the scores, texts about the films, several photos, well, it’s a project that will gather all this material and make it available to the general public, interested in this part of his work. It is also interesting that we were able to make available important excerpts from the films for people to watch, thanks to the good will and assistance from the copyright holders. This will bring the public to know this films again, this films that unfortunately weren’t reedited, making the access difficult. Therefore, it will take those relatively forgotten fifty years old productions to the today’s public a little more.

This project can bring new perspectives for new productions, new researches, people can access this material and develop new works, both academic and artistic, other musicians can use those scores to create new arrangements, new compositions based on this work, and keep this repertoire alive, and keep this repertoire resonating.

​Among the students, there were [André] Mehmari, Sérgio Basbaum, some folks from Rio de Janeiro too. Then we did three weeks of classes every day, all mornings and afternoons. The interesting thing is that he had a very special approach, and soon we felt that it was not the case of having a traditional arranging class when you will learn technique. The human material there was the best thing, so what happened: he brought his things and explained how he composed it, the context. As it is known, he didn’t have any scores from Coisas, that’s why Coisas was transcribed. What he had was some scores from The Maestro, the Carnival of Spirits, the ones made for big bands he also had, then he showed us. I remember I took a cassette tape, I used to copy from his tape to mine. At that time we didn’t have anything, there was no internet. I bought the vinyl of The Maestro two years after in a sebo, but it was difficult to find those things and that cassette tape was my benchmark, in this tape were recorded The Maestro and Carnival of Spirits.

We also had some scores that we managed to photocopy, because it was very expensive to photocopy in Campos do Jordão, we could photocopy only four scores or so. Then when I came back to São Paulo, after a year, I started lecturing at Santa Marcelina University. One of the thing I did in the ensembles class was to do some versions. The first version I did of April Child, was for Mônica Salmaso, [Fernando] Hashimoto, and [Sérgio] Kafejian to play. I didn’t have the English lyrics, then I lend the tape to Mônica for her to transcribe the words, it was very fun. Then, when I joined the Big da Santa I started introducing his arrangements, the ones that I had, digitalized [...].The Big da Santa started in 2001, the Ouro Negro concert is from 2000. Anyway, it was when we started, what I call, a revitalization of Moacir, which started with Ouro Negro when they made the CD, then the scores. Even at this time, the scores weren’t easily available. I believe that Big da Santa probably was the first big band to play Moacir’s music, those arrangements at least. Only after Savana Band, because Savana performed in the concert, they played at Arrangers Project.

​The internet is great. I learned a lot, I got a lot of people sending information, things like "you should check this out" or "you have to read this arrangement". In Brazil in 2015, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra also performed "Coisa nº 8", "Coisa nº 5" and "Coisa nº 2". What enchanted me in Moacir's music is the craftsmanship, the depth of soul and feeling and insight, and the spiritual engagement. The music is engaged. We always try to play it live. Jazz musicians always play Brazilian music, we love the music.

​Leading me to a more profound study during a doctoral research at the Federal University of Bahia, which I concluded in 2010. This research took me to California, where I could get in touch Moacir’s compositional and study material more closely. It was a wonderful access, with the collaboration of the Moacir Santos’ family: Moacir Santos Jr. and Cleonice Santos, to whom I am so grateful for the opportunity. This research ended up resulting in a book publication on Moacir, entitled Moacir Santos or the paths of a Brazilian musician, an adaptation of my thesis. Then a lot of things happened and many people showed interest in Moacir’s work, from this decade on, let’s say, working on his music. Among them, among all those things, there is this extremely important project about the Moacir Santos’ film scores, focusing on this Moacir Santos’ vein as a film music composer, especially for the Cinema Novo in the 1960s, even before his move to the U.S. in 1967. A moment of great production, he had an excellent film scoring métier, he was a composer working closely in the cinema market.

With his knowledge, herded from the great teachers he had, from the contact with the National Radio musicians: Lyrio Panicali, Radamés Gnattali, among others. People who composed film scores in the 1940s, […] and Lucas’ research brought this aspect, as Moacir used to say, brought this aspect to light.

This project, which is now granted, awarded […] not granted, it is an awarded project and very well awarded, because it will show to all of us how important is Moacir’s work.  A Moacir Santos that shows himself symphonic in several scores, as the score for Seara Vermelha, which is a […] until now for us it was basically a big question mark […] how this score could be hidden for so many years and we didn’t know of his symphonic ability. We were aware of his symphonic activity in the National Radio, because of the arrangements he made. But bringing this scores and making them available, this film scores, it can only be something really wonderful that is happening.