Gato Barbieri's Music

Like a symbolic abstract painter wildly splashing bold colors onto a canvas, Gato Barbieri performs from illuminated shadows of a stage. He appears as his name implies, "like a cat" slithering in the fashions that have become his trademark and persona. His face hidden by a black rimmed fedora and his eyes concealed by dark glasses, he appears and introduces himself with his sound. In a time when it's become increasingly difficult for new jazz performers to establish their own unique identification marks, the sound, Gato Barbieri is one of the last of the jazz titans who clearly can be identified once he puts his number one reed to his lips.

His music is clearly a reflection of his life and experiences. While his sound is bold, deep and reedy like an aged dry and brooding Beaujolais, in texture, we hear pain and passion with longing in the notes he plays. At his concerts he controls the audience and takes them to places they'd only dreamed of. From the pampas of his native Argentina to the streets of Rio, Gato is the tour guide and he shows us these things through his interpretation of them. His reading of a familiar melody is much like that of Betty Carter's vocal proficiency. Gato is able to get to the essence of a melody, such as Brazil orGranada and leave us with interpretive paintings and reflections, breathing new life into old war horses, rather than faithful note for note readings.

Gato controls the mood. As Eddie Palmieri will always build tensions in his playing finally releasing us with a dramatic shift and change into a montuno or swing. Gato does much the same in his own inimitable way. Within his group there does not exist the usual regimented change of soloist by merely stopping the tenor solo to usher in the piano solo, etc. Gato does this with a lot of musical theatrics. There may be a complete stop or pause and shift in tempo or mood before the solo is handed over to the piano, bass guitar or percussionist. While Gato, like a painter, signs all his work with interjected vocal insertions throughout a concert, the audience bookmarks these identifications while he moves us into another sphere of his playing.

Gato Barbieri sometimes is classified by those in the know as a "Contemporary Jazz Artist." While it's true he does receive a lot of air play over these "Contemporary Radio Stations," he's hardly in the same category as a Kenny G or a David Sanborn. Gato goes back some years and has played with advent garde jazz stalwarts such as Don Cherry and with many avant garde filmmakers. He's also scored a number of film soundtracks. The most notable one being "Last Tango in Paris."

Gato has lived and suffered In his lifetime. He's crossed many cultures and idioms and incorporated them deep into his work. Seeing him perform in concert is much like seeing Sonny Rollins. Both artists work with broad canvasses. Gato draws his background from South and Latin America, yet he's more than a Latin Jazz Musician. He's an original and whatever he performs is his. His sound, his interpretation, his moods, from deep longing to brooding sensuality, come from a place deep within this cool looking cat, draped with a long silk bufanda, dark glasses and hat, letting us all share in his deepest and darkest secrets of life.