Hermeto’s Mothership — 1 November 2026, Jamboree (Barcelona)

Jazz

The musicians who played with Hermeto Pascoal for decades bring his repertoire to the Jazz Festival, a little over a year after his death

Hermeto’s Mothership play Jamboree on Sunday 1 November in two sets, at seven and half past eight in the evening. General admission is €27 and members pay €23. The show belongs to the 58th Barcelona Jazz Festival and MasiMas Live promotes it.

Barcelona was due to see the group last year, at La Paloma and with Hermeto Pascoal himself up front. It didn’t happen: Pascoal died on 13 September 2025. What arrives now are the musicians who played and recorded with him for decades, with a programme the festival describes as one hundred per cent Hermeto repertoire, always in his own arrangements, drawing on several eras and taking in rarities along the way.

The line-up is Itiberê Zwarg on bass, in the group since 1977; Fábio Pascoal on percussion, a member since the late eighties and recording director on every Hermeto album since 1999; André Marques on piano, who joined in 1994; Ajurinã Zwarg on drums; and Jota P. on saxophones and flutes. The band’s name translates the Brazilian Nave Mãe.

Pascoal released more than thirty-five records and wrote more than ten thousand pieces, and he called that way of working Música Universal. Among the recent achievements the festival picks out for the five musicians is the Latin Grammy for “Pra Você, Ilza”, from 2024, a record dedicated to the memory of Dona Ilza, Hermeto’s wife.

Text by Aina Torrents