Heitor Pereira was born into a musical family in Brazil, wherein he was immersed in traditional samba and “Top 40”–type music from an early age.
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He startedHeitor Pereira was born into a musical family in Brazil, wherein he was immersed in traditional samba and “Top 40”–type music from an early age.
He started playing guitar at age 14 and later immersed himself in classical music, studying composition and orchestration through friends (having just taken a boat to the U.S., the young musician had income issues) and later enrolled at Berklee College of Music. Hietor also studied privately with jazz guitar geniuses George Van Eps and Mick Goodrick.
After playing for many of Brazil’s leading artists, including Milton Nascimento, Heitor toured and recorded with British soul/pop sensations Simply Red (1988–96), then permanently moved to the U.S., launching a successful session career (Elton John, Rod Stewart, Willie Nelson, Bryan Adams) and issuing his acoustic-rich solo albums (Untold Stories and Heitor TP).
When Heitor met legendary film composer Hans Zimmer, who needed Brazilian songs for the 1997 film As Good As It Gets, the film session and composing floodgates opened, and Heitor’s playing soon appeared in scores of such box office blockbusters as Gladiator and Blackhawk Down. The guitarist has nested in the film score aviary ever since, recently composing for major animated pictures like Despicable Me, Angry Birds, Minions, The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature and more.
What makes Heitor a rare bird in this business is that he uses tons of guitars (and ukuleles, mandolins, Jonathan Wilson’s GuitarViols—every kind of stringed instrument imaginable, along with his own voice, percussion, piano, various synthesizers, loopers, etc.), even employing a MIDI pickup-equipped nine-string guitar, which covers the full range of the orchestra, to input MIDI data, which is then assigned to orchestral instruments. (For more info, check his appearance in the award-winning SCORE: A Film Music Documentary