When Cyro Baptista first arrived in America from Brazil, he would often busk in the streets of Manhattan to help make ends meet, including next to a nut cart in Columbus Circle. Now, over four decades later, the percussionist and consummate collaborator staple is being feted directly across the street in a far grander setting, New York’s famed Jazz at Lincoln Center. Dubbed Cyro Baptista at 75: A Banquet for the Spirits, the two-day event will take place on November 7 and 8, nodding to his singular career that has included work with the likes of Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Medeski Martin & Wood and David Byrne, as well as his own Beat the Donkey.

A number of special guests will join the percussionist as well during the career retrospectives, including Trey Anastasio on night one and Cassandra Wilson on night two. Shortly before the run, Baptista discussed his friendship with Wynton Marsalis, fall tour as a longtime member of Trey Anastasio Band and his circuitous multi-decade journey across Broadway for his 75th birthday celebration. 

You are celebrating a milestone birthday with two big shows at Jazz at Lincoln Center. A number of your past collaborators, from several different projects, are slated to participate. When Jazz at Lincoln Center offered to honor your work, what were your initial hopes for how the shows would take shape? 

Well, it was supposed to be for 70. [Jazz at Lincoln Center Director, Concerts and Touring Operations and Baptista’s longtime associate] Justin Bias is always looking out for me, and they convinced me to do it, and then came the pandemic and everything happened. So then they said, “Now, let’s go 75.” And I said, “OK, let’s do it.”

When you look to do something, and you start looking back, my thought was to do a little bit of Beat the Donkey. Beat the Donkey had 15 people—it was about bringing together these percussionists with dance theater. But people started to say that it was impossible to reproduce, so for this we are going to a little bit of Beat the Doney and all these different phases [of my career]—a little bit of my crazy time with the improvising music/Downtown music I did with John Zorn and what we did with the Banquet of Spirits, the band I did after Beat the Donkey. And we are going to do a little bit from my most recent album, Shama.

And then Trey was so kind to come, and Trey is a big part of my work. I had worked with Herbie Hancock and, after that, I felt like I got to a stage of my career where I said, “I don’t want to be a sideman anymore.” He inspired me, starting to be a Buddhist and all this stuff, but I said, “I’m going to do my band.” I got a bunch of instruments and stayed in the studio with all these people passing through and that’s how Beat the Donkey started.

So this is mostly going to be my songs, and I’ll have all these people who are very important in my life and pay tribute to some of my influences. Hermeto Pascoal is somebody who I have known since I was a kid—he’s an enormous influence. For me, I consider him the best musician I ever saw. And he just died a few weeks ago. Then Naná Vasconcelos is another one who left us. He was kind of my mentor, and he played with Pat Metheny and BB King. He did it all. Don Cherry—a jazz trumpeter played from New York—we are also going to some of his songs.

It’s going to be two days, and the second part of the program is that each day is going to have a guest. The first day is going to be with Trey and I hope he doesn’t get scared because there’s going to be a lot of percussion, a lot of drummers up there. But I think he’ll dig that. We did that once in Radio City [in 2002]. We had all these percussionists on the stage and when we finished, we went to the front of the theater, the police came and the next day it was in the Daily News and everywhere.

As you mentioned, Trey is one of the guests joining you on Nov. 7. You are also going on the road with the Trey Anastasio Band this fall, as you have on a semi-regular basis for over two decades. This fall is actually the 25th anniversary of the first time you played together. For those who don’t know, can you recount the sit-in story where you first crossed paths?

I knew Billy Martin since he was very young and he invited me to play with his band [MMW]—to sit in—and I went and met Trey, who was sitting in, too. I didn’t have any idea who he was. He was this guy in very plain clothes with round glasses, and he came on to the stage with us in Albany, N.Y. [on Dec. 1, 2000, one of his first appearance during Phish’s first hiatus], and people started jumping up and down and I said, “Who is this guy?” And when he left, he pointed to me and said, “Man, you’re going to play with me.” So many people have said things like that over the years, and they are just trying to be nice, but then a year past and he invited me to go to The Barn and I went and said, “Maybe I’ll play with this guy—do a couple concerts and do some recordings.” And now it’s 25 years later and I’m like, “Wow, that’s a long time.” And he was so kind to participate in this. And he’s part of my life—I’m glad he’s going to be there in soul and body.

You grew up in São Paulo, Brazil. In addition to these shows celebrating your 75th birthday, this year mark the 45th anniversary of when you first came to America and started playing music here. What initially brought you to New York and how did you get involved in the Downtown jazz world you are so often associated with?

I came in 1980 with, as we say in Brazil, one hand in front and one band in back—I had nothing. I got a scholarship to work with Creative Music Studio—Karl Berger, Don Cherry, Trilock Gourtou, Jacques Desjonet, everybody was involved. It was a farm in Woodstock.

I was lucky. I fell in the right place, at the right time. It was one of the places where “world music” started. I lived in that moment and there was so much information that, 45 years later, I’m still trying to understand it. So I came here to be there for three or four months and, when I finished, I had like 70 bucks. So I said, “I’m gonna stop in Manhattan.” And I’m still here. [Laughs.]

I started to play in the streets, but the streets in the beginning of the ‘80s were full of amazing musicians playing—it was school for me. I was more Brazilian in New York than I was in Brazil. We played in the streets, and the police would come. Then I started to play in the West Village and with Astrud Gilberto, who did “The Girl from Ipanema.” I was a little too crazy for her, but I played with her for a long time, and I started to participate in the New York jazz/Blue Note scene and that thing. But then I started to get really bored with that and, at the same time, people who couldn’t afford to pay the rent would go to the Lower East Side and then Alphabet City where it was much cheaper to live. So all of these musicians started to live there away from the greed—and that’s when I met a community of people, like Zorn and Marc Ribot. The Knitting Factory was starting. CBGB was there. And I started to play in this environment where I didn’t really need to be Brazilian—put a pineapple in my head and be Brazilian all the time and scream. It was very good for me and opened a door in terms of creating and developing my music. So that’s where I came from and I’ve stayed here.

Cassandra Wilson will take part in the second night of your Jazz at Lincoln Center program. When did she first enter your story?

Cassandra was part of this time that I was in the jazz scene. I was already recording a lot and a producer came to me and said, “We have this singer, she’s going to do this new album. Why don’t you do an arrangement for a percussion piece with her?” I said, “Oh, man, who is this singer? A jazz singer? Another jazz singer? No, no, no.” But I did it and when I got there, there was much percussion in the studio, and I’m going to do this arrangement. In the studio it could can be nice or it could be a catastrophe, and it was going in the catastrophe way.

Then I said, “Wait a minute—I’m going to do some impersonations. I’m going to do a Chinese percussionist.” Then I did a Chinese percussionist. Then I did a Puerto Rican percussionist, and everybody started to laugh, and it passed the time and they recorded it. This was for Cassandra, for Blue Note. [He appears on the 1993 hit album, Blue Light ’til Dawn.]

Then three months went past, and they come and say, “Cyro, your published because your songs are on the album.” I said, “I didn’t do any songs.” They said, “Do you remember those things you did? They did some editing and it’s a song and it’s your song now.” I thought, “Well, it is a jazz singer. How many can it sell?” And, boom, it came out and sold 300,000 in the first week. I never saw so much money in my life. And then it won the Grammy and everything.

Cassandra has helped me a lot—she was so kind to me. And she was so kind also to accept to come to do the second day. And because of her, I met Kevin Bright, a guitar player for Toronto, who I did a project called Super Generous. We signed with Blue Note, too.

For many years, Beat the Donkey was your primary outlet for original music. What were your initial goals for that project as well as your most recent album Shama?

Beat the Donkey was the love of my life, it was so great. I never imagined that it would really work. It’s very difficult to work with dancers sometimes and it’s not easy to [combine] musicians and dancers like that. I needed to convince dancers that they are musicians too and that musicians can move around and jump. I had to tell these jazz musicians, “You need to move, you  need to change your costumes. You need to be a character on the stage and not just give this beautiful solo because it’s part of a story.”

I had people who were Japanese, African and Brazilian come to the table and I said, “We are going to play chairs and do this piece with the chairs.” We developed this emotional United Nations. And the music really brought us together, and it ended up working. I’m proud that people who came out of Beat the Donkey have won Grammys and some are living from the music to this day. And some have passed. You get to 75 and you see that you did a little bit there to help. It’s very rewarding.

For the tour for this album, Shama, it was the first time I had just Brazilian musicians. It was a beautiful experience for me because I’m Brazilian and I am also American. And right now, it is difficult being American. Beat the Donkey is for sure over now and I used to be very good at multitasking. I would be playing with a lot of people. I would be composing. Now, I’m 75, I try to do one thing well at the time.

My latest project is this show now and also the upcoming Trey tour right after. I have one day off before I go to Denver and then I start this Trey tour—and a Trey tour is very demanding. He’ll say, “I’m gonna send you the songs for this tour,” and then he sends 60 songs that can be called at any time. So I’m putting my energy on this show because it’s going to about 15 musicians. And to use them to recreate these pieces that are part of my life is very demanding as well. A lot of people who played with me people—who I haven’t seen for a very long time—are going to be there and it’s been an adventure already because we’re getting close.

During the fall of 2004, Beat the Donkey played a show at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Hermeto Pascoal during the venue’s opening run. At that show, I remember you mentioning that Wynton Marsalis had showed you the blueprints for the space when it was still a concept.

It was one of the most crazy times of my life. I was playing with Zorn and Beat the Donkey, and I got a call that Wynton wanted to talk to me about a project—he wanted me to go to his house to talk to him about a project. I said, “Really, me?” For me, Wynton was this figure, this guy with a silk rope and a pipe—B flat after C major. I told a friend to go with me because I’m scared. So we went and Wynton was living in the building on top of Juilliard at that time. When we get there, they say, “Mr. Baptista is here to walk to Wynton,” and he opens the door and had on a T shirt with a big hole, and it was totally not what I pictured. He’s like, “Man, come here—I’m cooking some gumbo. You like gumbo?”

So we started to drink some Armagnac from France and watch basketball. And at the same time we sat at the piano and he says, “What are we gonna do?” And then I start [doing this percussion drum-beat voices] and then he did something I never saw anyone do before. He got the paper, and he would do in one movement with the hand three voices—trumpet, trombone and all this—based on the crazy shit that I just sang to him. And then we did this first song that’s called “Dream in the Washboard” that he arranged for the whole orchestra. And I got a bunch of instruments from Brazil for a big band, which they have in Brazil, and then we did a week in Avery Fisher Hall.

And then, at this time, he says, “Now, you are going to my room” and in his bedroom, in front of his bed, were the blueprints of what would be Jazz at Lincoln Center. I was like, “Oh, my goodness. He said, “Man, this is my wife. This is my baby. I go to sleep looking at that and I wake up with that.” I have so much respect for that guy. He is very real. He built that thing, big by brick after brick. He’s a jazz musician who raised millions and millions to do that thing.

Bringing things full circle, you also used to busk outside the space that is now Jazz at Lincoln Center at the outset of your career, right?

When I first came to New York, I played in the street. I was at Columbus Circle, right on front there. They had a Brazilian guy who used to sell nuts from his cart. And he was a good drummer, too. We would stop there and say, “Oh, man, come to play with us,” and we’d love right there in front of [where Jazz at Lincoln Center would eventually be build.] And then we’d steal his nut! [Laughs.] And then, one day, this Black guy with a hat—an older guy—walked by and started looking at us play. The leader of the band said, “Cyro, do a solo for this guy. You know who he is? I said, “No” and they said it was Max Roach. Then I peed a little bit in my pants. Do a solo for Max Roach? Then, when we finished, he said to us, “Please call me. This is my phone number. Let’s do something together.” We were so scared—it felt like too much and we didn’t speak English very well so we never had the courage pick up the phone and call him. Who would even speak to him of we did? I met him in Verona years later, and I said I am that I’m guy who peed my pants and he said, “Why didn’t you call me?” It could have changed my entire life. And that is funny because I am playing right there where I peed my pants now.