Gato Barbieri

Gato Barbieri--阿根廷國寶級薩克斯演奏家，1924年11月出生在阿根廷。少年的Gato Barbieri雖然出身在一個音樂家庭里，但是他直到12歲，才在聽了Charlie Parker的音樂后，開始學(xué)習(xí)音樂（豎琴），次年改學(xué)眾音薩克斯，從而開始一步步走上了輝煌的道路。1953年他加入了Schifrin大樂隊，開始贏得了更多人的注意，50年代后期，Barbieri開始帶領(lǐng)自己的樂團。1962年他移居羅馬，也在那里取了意大利裔的妻子Michelle，次年他在巴黎結(jié)識了小喇叭手Don Cherry，并加入Don Cherry的樂團，他們一起做巡回演出，所演奏的是前衛(wèi)爵士。初期的Gato Barbieri在風(fēng)格是比較狂野的，到了70年代中期才轉(zhuǎn)為柔和，無論他走哪個方向，他的音樂總是可以帶動人的情緒，引起很多感動。1970年 Barbieri回到阿根廷，他的音樂走向也做了些許改變，他在旋律節(jié)奏上加入更多的拉丁風(fēng)格。1972年他也演出了電影Last Tango In Paris巴黎的最后探戈，這部講男女情欲的電影，頗有爭議，男主角是大名鼎鼎的馬龍·白蘭度，同時電影原聲帶也為Barbieri贏得了一做葛萊美獎。之后他忙碌于在許多知名的爵士樂節(jié)中演出。由于身體了動了幾次手術(shù)以及妻子Michelle的過世，Barbieri在90年代的演出已經(jīng)很少了。
 
by Richard S. Ginell
 
Gato Barbieri is the second Argentine musician to make a significant impact upon jazz — the first being Lalo Schifrin, in whose band Barbieri played as a teenager. His story has been that of an elongated zigzag odyssey between his homeland and North America. He started out playing to traditional Latin rhythms in his early years, turning his back on his heritage to explore the jazz avant-garde in the 60s, reverting to South American influences in the early 70s, playing pop and fusion in the late 70s, only to go back and forth again in the 80s. North American audiences first heard Barbieri when he was a wild bull, sporting a coarse, wailing John Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders-influenced tone. Yet by the mid-70s, his approach and tone began to mellow somewhat in accordance with ballads like What a Diffrence a Day Makes (which he always knew as the vintage bolero Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado) and Carlos Santanas Europa. Still, regardless of the idiom in which he works, the warm-blooded Barbieri has always been one of the most overtly emotional tenor sax soloists on record, occasionally driving the voltage ever higher with impulsive vocal cheerleading.
 
Though Barbieris family included several musicians, he did not take up an instrument until the age of 12 when a hearing of Charlie Parkers Nows the Time encouraged him to study the clarinet. Upon moving to Buenos Aires in 1947, he continued private music lessons, picked up the alto sax, and by 1953 had become a prominent national musician through exposure in the Schifrin orchestra. Later in the 50s, Barbieri started leading his own groups, switching to tenor sax. After moving to Rome in 1962 with his Italian-born wife, he met Don Cherry in Paris the following year and, upon joining his group, became heavily absorbed in the jazz avant-garde. Barbieri also played with Mike Mantlers Jazz Composers Orchestra in the late 60s; you can hear his fierce tone unleashed in the Hotel Overture of Carla Bleys epic work Escalator Over the Hill.
 
Yet after the turn of the next decade, Barbieri experienced a slow change of heart and began to reincorporate and introduce South American melodies, instruments, harmonies, textures, and rhythm patterns into his music. Albums such as the live El Pampero on Flying Dutchman and the four-part Chapter series on Impulse — the latter of which explored Brazilian and Afro-Cuban rhythms and textures, as well as Argentine — brought Barbieri plenty of acclaim in the jazz world and gained him a following on American college campuses.
 
However, it was a commercial accident, his sensuous theme and score for the controversial film Last Tango in Paris in 1972, that made Barbieri an international star and a draw at festivals in Montreux, Newport, Bologna, and other locales. A contract with A&M in the U.S. led to a series of softer pop/jazz albums in the late 70s, including the brisk-selling Caliente! He returned to a more intense, rock-influenced, South American-grounded sound in 1981 with the live Gato...Para los Amigos under the aegis of producer Teo Macero, before doubling back to pop/jazz on Apasionado. Yet his profile in the U.S. was diminished later in the decade in the wake of the buttoned-down neo-bop movement.
 
Beset by triple-bypass surgery and bereavement over the death of his wife, Michelle, who was his closest musical confidant, Barbieri was inactive through much of the 1990s. But he returned to action in 1997, playing with most of his impassioned intensity, if limited in ideas, at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles and recording a somewhat bland album, Que Pasa, for Columbia. Che Corazon followed in 1999.
 
As the 21st Century opened, Barbieri saw a steady stream of collections and reissues of his work appear. A new album, Shadow of the Cat, appeared from Peak Records in 2002.