A Dreamlike Collaboration From Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding

His sound was distinct, mixing various Brazilian genres as well as jazz, classical, rock and folk, making music that can be at times both pleasing and haunting. “He is a grand synthesis of the best Brazilian music,” said Nelson Motta, a Brazilian music producer and author. “An idol of the most sophisticated, most ambitious musicians.”

Nascimento collaborated with Elis Regina, Antônio Carlos Jobim and Chico Buarque in Brazil and with James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Duran Duran abroad, among many others. Bailey said in an interview that he and Maurice White — Earth, Wind & Fire’s other lead singer — traveled to Brazil in the 1970s to study its music. White met with Nascimento, and “came back raving about the experience,” Bailey said. “The next record that we did, we were all over the Milton Nascimento experience.”

Spalding first heard Nascimento while a student at Berklee College of Music when a friend put on Wayne Shorter’s 1974 album “Native Dancer,” which opens with Nascimento’s falsetto. “How is this on Earth and I didn’t know?” she recalled thinking. Now she admits she is incredulous when other people haven’t heard of him. “It’s like, ‘Do you know Bach?’” she said.

Spalding, who has won five Grammys, called Nascimento one of her greatest references. “Even for the beautiful arcs and unexpected melodies that you can hear in samba and a lot of Brazilian music, his is different, and it’s been absorbed into people’s marrow in Brazil, and I’m sure affected their consciousness as a people,” she said. “And he’s just, you know, over there in his house, just chilling, watching novelas. He’s impactful, but he’s not trying to be.”

‘Just like a master painter’

In 2022, Nascimento embarked on a farewell tour across the United States, Europe and Brazil, singing while seated, in a multicolored cloak, as the band played around him. Spalding joined him onstage in New York and Boston.