He smoked the deadliest of cigars. As I would drive him to the airport, and if the windows were closed in the car, any flies or mosquitos would drop immediately from the smoke of his cigar.
I would visit with him at his apartment at the Essex House in New York. He spoke no English. I spoke no Portugese - so we communicated in our limited French. While we conversed he would continue to fill the pages of a new score without missing a stroke during his conversation.
Robert Austin Boudreau, Music Director of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, remembers Villa-Lobos in a letter to Lisa Peppercorn, who published it in her book The World of Villa-Lobos in Pictures & Documents. Boudreau commisioned two late works for wind band from Villa-Lobos: the 1958 Fantasy in the form of a Choros, and the 1959 Concerto Grosso, both of which deserve to be better known.