Customer Reviews

Fenix

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

After thirty years without Gato, I've returned to my first love. "Fenix" was all the rage on college campuses in 1972. It's the first jazz album I ever listened to. I'm not sure why Gato has been shut out of the jazz canon. I find very few written sources mentioning his music. I gather that the reduction of his music to a "smooth formula" in pursuit of large sales after his success with the soundtrack to "Last Tango in Paris" did not endear him to the jazz intelligentsia. Nevertheless, "Fenix" is a "high octane", incendiary performance before Gato's fall from grace. Nana Vasconcelos' percussion is nothing short of perfection. The crass commercialism that followed can almost be forgiven when listening to this very "wicked" music!

Gato's first US recordings were with leaders of the N.Y. "free jazz" avant garde in the late '60's, (Don Cherry, Carla Bley) and his use of "screech" tones in the high end of his horn's range concealed an essentially romantic conception. By "Phenix" he had gotten more comfortable in bringing Latin American concepts, and instrumentation into his music; on Phenix, he flirts with electric instruments (guitar, bass, and Fender Rhodes piano) as well.

The result is intense, yet, in places, almost too "pretty" for an avant garde player. Within a couple of years, after a group of albums for Impulse in Latin America, and the "Last tango" soundtrack, he'd suddenly gone "smooth". But that was later...

Two ideas strike me hearing Gato Barbiari's work. The first is, the sheer passion in his playing. This is undeniable and I need say no more than advise you, strongly, to listen.

The second is how is he not playing free jazz but is informed by the genre. When Barbiari was rising through the ranks, free was the order of the day, and if you want to hear him working in this context, check out Michael Mantler's 1968 Jazz Composers Orchestra, where Gato was one of the rising stars featured.

Barbiari choose to go another direction: latin. Given his ethnicity this may seem predictable, but what he does with the music is not. This is no Jobim or Stan Getz template: if anything, Gato's sizzling music is rock informed: it has the propulsion of Santana or early Mandrel. The piece fits, as this master emerged full blown when rock had truly taken over the world.

But if you listen to the full tenor tone, the little seconds where Gato blows free up in the rafters, you see his perfect craft. He is no Coltraneite. His big, punchy tone is punctuated with the avant gaurde--then being integrated into other forms--but can also be as melodic and conventional as it is raspy.

The music here is so passionate, so rich. The academics here are interesting, but not nearly as much as the pungent Latin music on this album

Now forget everything I just said: all you really gotta do is by this, and listen

I've loved this music for, oh, 30 or 35 years, but who's counting? Anyway, it's great to find CDs which are "hard to find," so my thanks go to this seller for an easy and professional transaction.

I do collect CDs not only wishing to hear the music but have library of it. This particular CD was described as a digipack. When it arrived I found CD in a jewel box with front leaflet included only, not even back graphics. What a disappointment.