On a balmy Tuesday evening, an unassuming man with gray hair in a black suit strolled into the River Café in Brooklyn and sat at a Steinway grand. Partly hidden by the fronds of a tall palm, he began to play the usual standards.

A few patrons bobbed their heads, but no one seemed to realize that the man behind the piano was none other than Dom Salvador, one of the most influential, if underappreciated, figures in the history of Brazilian music.

There was a time when listeners flocked to see Salvador perform live. In the 1950s, the child prodigy played past his bedtime at local dance clubs; by the 1960s, the young man had helped to create and was performing samba-jazz on the most renowned stages of Rio de Janeiro; and in the early ’70s, he had become a major player in samba-soul, a Brazilian twist on American funk and soul.

But he walked away from it all. In 1973, he moved to New York with the intention of making it as a jazz musician, earning a coveted position as Harry Belafonte’s music director not long after he arrived.