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224 Gato Barbieri Argentine tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri began to develop his signature sound once he left his native land for Europe in the early 1960s. In Italy he met Don Cherry, who was influential in his thinking, and soon became a member of Cherry’s group for a few years. They recorded two albums for Blue Note in 1965–66 and played an extended engagement at the Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, in March 1966 (ESP released these club recordings in three volumes in 2007–9). That same year, along with Cherry and others in Paris, he recorded Krzysztof Komeda’s soundtrack for the Jerzy Skolimowski film Le Départ. On March 15, 1967, he made his first album as a leader (besides an early record before leaving Argentina), In Search of the Mystery, for ESP; with an unusual quartet that included cello, bass, and drums, it was the freest music of his entire career. Two months later, back in Milan, he recorded a trio date, and he continued to work steadily until his soundtrack for Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Last Tango in Paris (1972) made him an international star. He settled in New York definitively in 1971, moving to his home on Central Park South some years later, where he lives with his second wife, Laura, and their son. How does your free jazz period in the 1 960s fit into your overall musical trajectory? I started professionally with an orchestra playing bebop in Buenos Aires when I was sixteen. I am seventy-six now, so that was sixty years ago. Later I had my own group there. We played every Monday, made a small r ecord. I’ve worked with a lot of different people, different kinds of music. I was a very good sight reader—in Italy, when I didn’t have money, they asked me to play a concert of Stravinsky, so I did . But after, I s aid I w ouldn’t do t hat anymore, because the people who play in symphonies are fast. I had played symphony music in Buenos Aires, when I played alto. I learned everything. In 1960 I went to Brazil and stayed for six or seven months, then I went to Cuba, and from there, I said to [his wife] Michelle, “We should go to Europe.” In 1962 we went to Italy, where nobody was p laying. So, I t aught a lo t of people, not by talking but playing. Because I don’t like to talk too much about music. You can explain something Gato Barbieri 225 but, f or in stance, wi th D on Cher ry in f orty-five min utes w e p layed fifteen tunes—because he j umped from here, to there, to there. And I le arned to be attentive, to listen to the leader. It’s like a basketball team, or in soccer, when they are good they have this kind of intuition, they know each other very well. Music can be like that. With some musicians, everything just flows. On Th e Th i rd World [1969], I p icked up Lonnie Liston Smith, Roswell Rudd, Beaver Harris, and Charlie Haden. I gave them the music, and we didn’t do rehearsals. We just went in and played. But when you are young, you go and you don’t have anything to lose. How did the duo session with Dollar Brand [Hamba Khale] come about? Th at was a beautiful record. That was in 1966, in Milano. I had p layed with his drummer, Makaya Ntshoko. And I had seen him play, but we never played together except this one time. We both happened to be in Milano, and someone said, “Why don’t you do a duo?” So we did. We just started playing. It was incredible. When you made In Search of the Mystery for ESP, your first record as a leader, how did you approach the occasion? My concept was don’t use piano, and use Calo Scott. I had two melodies. Th ey weren’t v ery c lear b ut t hey w ere t here. Unfortunately, w hile w e p layed, t he drummer seemed to think he was playing solo. Besides, we weren’t there for the mixing. We made the record and then we left. How did you choose the musicians, particularly Calo Scott on cello and Sirone on bass? That made for an unusual combination. Well...

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