This excellent picture of Villa-Lobos with musical youngsters was taken at the inauguration of the Villa-Lobos Conservatory in 1957. Though Villa never had kids of his own, he loved them, and wrote many pieces for them or about things of interest to them. Indeed, there's something very child-like about his intense enthusiasms for simple things like kite flying, billiards and strong coffee; he was intellectually complex but emotionally simple.
The picture is from this really interesting 2009 blog post by Roberto Muggiati, entitled "Hitchcock, Beatles e todo aquele jazz" ("...and all that jazz"). From what I can decipher via Google Translate, the post is about Villa's influence on Hollywood and popular music: from Bernard Herrmann to Branford Marsalis. I'm especially interested in Muggiati's comments on George Martin's important (and under-appreciated) contributions to the Beatles music from their golden middle period, with explicit borrowing from Villa-Lobos in Eleanor Rigby and I Am the Walrus. He says, in this typically not-quite-good-enough translation:
Martin admitted that the theme that the strings touch "I'm the Walrus" before "Sitting in an English Garden / Waiting for the Sun" were taken from the "Choros for Orchestra" by old Heitor.Two problems with this: I haven't been able to track down any book where Martin talks about Villa-Lobos, and secondly, I'm not sure what "Choros for Orchestra" refers to (perhaps Choros #6?) Can anyone help me out?
Here's the song, from the great Magical Mystery Tour album; the section in question comes right after the two-minute mark. Am I missing something obvious here?
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