Deodato

Brazilian-born keyboardist, arranger and producer Eumir Deodato has racked up 16 platinum records, while his discography, including compilations and all his work as arranger, producer and keyboardist, surpasses over 450 albums. But despite such a successful career, the man known as simply ‘Deodato’ will always be best known for his brilliant adaptation of the Richard Strauss classicalopus, "Also Sprach Zarathustra (Theme From 2001: A Space Odyssey)". Taken from his classic 1972 CTI recording Prelude, the unlikely hit sold over a million copies and catapulted Deodato to international stardom. Today, his legacy can be found in a host of songs as artists as diverse as Fun Loving Criminals, Fatboy Slim and Lupe Fiasco have sampled his music, while forty years on he reunited with fellow CTI musicians Billy Cobham, Airto alongside Al Jarreau to release 'The Crossing' on Expansion Records

Until his ’72 recording for CTI, Deodato had been better known as an arranger for the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilberto, Wes Montgomery and Frank Sinatra and for his own series of classic Bossa Nova albums recorded back home in Brazil. But when CTI head Creed Taylor gave Deodato the chance to record his own album for the label, the result was a series of jazz inflected covers of classical music which spawned a massive world-wide club hit with his Latin tinged take on Strauss’s classic theme!

Following the release of Prelude, Deodato became a major name going on to record many more albums and working behind the scenes on some of the world most loved classics – he arranged Roberta flacks’ seminal ‘killing me Softly’ alongside Kool and the Gang’s ‘Celebration’ (amongst many many more) and later arranged three Bjork Albums – ‘Post’, Telegram’ and Homogenic’ of which he lists as one of his most interesting associations. More recently conducted the strings for KD Lang who remarked 'Deodato has an amazing capacity to understand the intimacy of the track".

His songs have been covered by George Benson, Lee Ritenour, Sarah Vaughan and The Emotions to mention just a few, and he has worked on many movie scores, including The Onion Field, The Black Pearl, Ghostbusters II, The Girl From Ipanema, and The Adventurers (recorded with A.C. Jobim and the London Symphony Orchestra), and his recordings have also been widely used on major movies such as Being There and The Exorcist.

He became a pioneer of the acid jazz movement with the Brand new heavies and Jamiroquai citing him as an influence, yet it’s his 70s classic hits that have endured for millions - when he launches into ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ or the club classic ‘Super Strut’, you can be sure that the energy from the stage will blow any winter blues away!!