The legacy of Gato Barbieri – Clarín.com

With the death of Leandro “Gato” Barbieri, Saturday at 83 in New York, the highest figure disappears gave Argentina to jazz (not forgetting the names of Oscar Lalo Schifrin and German). In the ’70s critic Nat Hentoff defined it as nothing less than the most original jazz force from a non-American musician guitarist Django Reinhardt after.

The musician was born in Rosario on 28 November 1932. at twelve years settled with his family in Buenos Aires and began studying the clarinet. At 18 change the clarinet sax; first high, then definitely the tenor.

For those years playing in the orchestra of Lalo Schifrin; encourages Bop Club meetings; It is nicknamed “Jack” by his silences and his mysterious appearance; recorded solos that his brother (the fine trumpeter Ruben Barbieri, four years older) is writing to the film Tracker Osias Wilensky; in just over a decade the musician feels that there is nothing more to do in Buenos Aires.

In 1962 definitively left the Argentina, which only return for some recitals. After a few months in Brazil, he settled in Rome with his wife Michelle. He meets the tompetista Don Cherry, a fundamental figure of free jazz.

In the ’60s several times crosses the Atlantic to be rooted in New York. Plays with the great figures of the avant-garde: Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor, Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman. Meet the Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha. A Barbieri what impressed movies Rocha, with its “aesthetics of hunger”, its radicality, his strange laconic; fraternal friendship with the filmmaker also allows you to imagine a certain identity: the album The Third World (Third World), recorded in November 1969, is a clear testimony. The disc comprises a composition in tribute to the filmmaker, Antonio Das Mortes , and a version of the Bachianas Brasileiras Villa-Lobos, a tango of Piazzolla and a piece of inspiration Andean Barbieri, Song llamero .

This is the first album recorded by Barbieri for Wagnerian resonances stamp series: The Flying Dutchman (The Flying Dutchman). They will Phoenix (1971) Pampero (1972) Bolivia (1973) and Under Fire (1973 ). Perhaps we have here the first historical examples of a type of merger would find numerous accessions in Argentina music, although the concept of fusion from the 80 refers to something as washing does not seem appropriate to describe what sounds in these disks.

Here Barbieri has already fully developed their sound, and the imprint of their experiences with perceived free. It is an exasperated saxophone, which runs outside the comfortable-elegant log and pulls almost invariably toward acute. No survey or alternation of functions alone in these sets sax leads the line from beginning to end. The idea is that of a solo instrument, plus a tingling rhythm section. It is not jazz rock, and latin jazz. It is unique, an act of extreme lyricism that came and went with Gato Barbieri.