Brazilian guitarist, arranger, and composer Oscar Castro-Neves has died, succombing to complications caused by gastric cancer, and passing away in Los Angeles last Friday aged 73. A decade-long member and music director of Sergio Mendes’ Brasil 66 from 1971-81 he was born, one of triplets, in Rio de Janeiro in May 1940, and as a teenager had a pop hit with ‘Chora Tua Tristeza’, a song widely covered in later years by dozens of artists. He was part of the bossa nova wave sweeping Brazil and beyond in the 1960s, and in his early twenties began to make his name in the United States, appearing at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and his quartet toured with the Dizzy Gillespie quintet and Stan Getz quartet. Later he would move into writing for films, and his work for movies included Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and LA Story. His own albums include The Rhythm and Sounds of Bossa Nova in the early part of his career, and All One and Playful Heart much more recently, and he appeared on albums by Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder among many others, as well as producing Grammy-winning Soul of the Tango by Yo-Yo Ma and Joe Henderson’s Double Rainbow: The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Oscar Castro-Neves pictured photo Curtis McElhinney