Gato Barbieri

Gato Barbieri

Barbieri in 1970
Background information
Birth name Leandro Barbieri
Born (1932-11-28)28 November 1932
Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina
Died 2 April 2016(2016-04-02) (aged 83)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres Jazz, Latin jazz, smooth jazz
Occupation(s) Musician, bandleader
Instruments Tenor saxophone
Years active 1961–2016
Labels

Leandro "Gato" Barbieri (28 November 1932 – 2 April 2016) was an Argentine jazz tenor saxophonist and composer who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and is known for his Latin jazz recordings of the 1970s.[1] His nickname, Gato, is Spanish for "cat".

Biography

Born to a family of musicians, Barbieri began playing music after hearing Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time". He played the clarinet and later the alto saxophone while performing with the Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, while playing in Rome, he also worked with the trumpeter Don Cherry. By now influenced by John Coltrane's late recordings, as well as those from other free jazz saxophonists such as Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders, he began to develop the warm and gritty tone with which he is associated. In the late 1960s, he was fusing music from South America into his playing and contributed to multi-artist projects like Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill. His score for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris earned him a Grammy Award and led to a record deal with Impulse! Records.[1]

By the mid-70s, he was recording for A&M Records and moved his music towards soul-jazz and jazz-pop. Caliente! (1976) included his best known song, a rendition of Carlos Santana's "Europa". The follow-up album, Ruby Ruby (1977) were both produced by fellow musician and label co-founder, Herb Alpert.

Although he continued to record and perform well into the 1980s, the death of his wife Michelle led him to withdraw from the public arena. He returned to recording and performing in the late 1990s, composing original scores at the behest of friend Bahman Maghsoudlou for Amir Naderi's Manhattan by Numbers (1991) and Daryush Shokof's Seven Servants (1996). The album Qué Pasa (1997) moved more into the style of smooth jazz.

Barbieri was the inspiration for the character Zoot in the fictional Muppet band Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem.[2]

On April 2, 2016, Barbieri died of pneumonia in New York City at the age of 83.[3]

Discography

As leader

As sideman

With Carla Bley and Paul Haines

With Gary Burton

With Don Cherry

With Charlie Haden

With the Jazz Composer's Orchestra

With Oliver Nelson

With Alan Shorter

With Antonello Venditti

  • Da Sansiro A Samarcanda'

References

  1. 1 2 Ginell, Richard S. "Gato Barbieri Biography". AllMusic. All Media Network. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Gupta, Anika (October 2008). "The Woman Behind Miss Piggy". Smithsonian. ISSN 0037-7333.
  3. ↑ Keepnews, Peter (2 April 2016). "Gato Barbieri, Latin Jazz Trailblazer With a Saxophone, Is Dead at 83". The New York Times. p. A20.

External links

Gato Barbieri at Find a Grave

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