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On Thursday legendary Brazilian arranger Rogerio Duprat died in Sao Paulo at 74. Although he set out to be a composer, with a strong predilection for the avant-garde — in the early 60s he traveled to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez — he ultimately made his name creating wild orchestral settings for singers like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Gal Costa, and Os Mutantes at the height of the tropicalia movement, making himself a key architect of its sound. He was often called the George Martin of tropicalia, but that analogy doesn’t suggest how progressive and weird his arrangements on those records were. He was part of the musical wing’s defining album, Tropicalia, ou Panis et Circensis, whose cover pictures him holding a chamber pot like it was a teacup.
