Biography

Guilherme Franco (born November 25, 1946 and died November 12, 2016 in São Paulo, Brazil) was a percussionist in the jazz and world fusion music genres. Franco has performed on the albums of many notable jazz musicians such as McCoy Tyner, Lonnie Liston Smith, Don Pullen and Woody Shaw. Between 1971 and 1976 he was a member of Keith Jarrett's "American Band", and he has also been a member of Paul Winter's Consort. In 1981 he started a samba school in New York City and a power samba group called "Pe De Boi" (a Brazilian slang term for a good musician, literally meaning "foot of the bull"). As a result, he began playing many gigs in the New York City underground scene of the 1980s with the likes of David Byrne and David Johansen among many others. He was said to practice music 14 hours a day.Franco suffered a stroke in March 2015 and was cared for at the Hospital Arnaldo Pezzuti Cavalcanti in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo where he died in November 2016.