About the NCCP Players
Cyro Baptista
Percussion / Composer
Guest Artist
Cyro Baptista is a Brazilian percussionist and composer who has played a wide array of traditional and self-created percussion instruments over his twenty-year career. Baptista's credits read like a "Who's Who" of modern music.
His vast experience and penchant for innovation has made him one of the most respected Brazilian percussionists in the world, and has led to associations with a wide range of leading jazz, pop, classical, avant-garde and artists including Paul Simon, Yo-Yo-Ma, Herbie Hancock, Kathleen Battle, Paula Robison, James Taylor, Wynton Marsalis, Toni Bennett, Cassandra Wilson, Herbie Hancock, Laurie Anderson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daniel Barenboin, Bobby McFerrin, John Zorn, Trey Anastasio (Phish), Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Ivan Lins, Santana and Sting.
Baptista has performed on several Grammy award winning albums: Yo-Yo-Ma's "Obrigado Brasil", Yo-Yo-Ma's "Obrigado Brasil Live in Concert", Cassandra Wilson's "Blue Light ‘Til Dawn", Tonni Bennett's "Duos", The Chieftains' "Santiago", Ivan Lins' "A Love Affair", and Herbie Hancock's highly-acclaimed "Gershwin's World". He was nominated for the 2005 Grammy Awards for his collaboration with Herbie Hancock and Trey Anastasio on the CD "Possibilities."
Baptista's most recent solo recordings, are based on the work of his phenomenal percussion ensemble "Beat the Donkey," giving free reign to his imagination, combining music and humor with dance and martial arts, mixing instruments from Brazil, USA, Indonesia and Africa, and unusual inventions of his own. The CD has been picked by the critics of The New York Times as one of their ten favorite alternative albums of 2002. The second CD of the group, entitled "Love the Donkey" was released in 2005.
Blue Note Records released "Supergenerous," a duo CD recorded with guitarist Kevin Breit (KD Lang, Cassandra Wilson). Billboard called "Supergenerous" "pure aural pleasure" and the Washington Post noted it "a marvelous debut that manages to feel outside and intimate at the same time."
Baptista's first solo recording, Villa Lobos/Vira Loucos, a heady mix of his own compositions with the work of the brilliant Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos, has been acclaimed as "the most courageous, bright, funny, dramatic, and imaginative work in recent memory."