THE BEAT GOES ON
Argentinian-born tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, wearing his friend, the black hat, sits back on the bed. His wife, Michelle — strong-boned, intensely beautiful — sits in a chair nearby. Gato’s English is uncertain. Michelle’s is perfect; she translates for him when necessary.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Gato Barbieri’s Third World Shower
Argentinian-born tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, wearing his friend, the black hat, sits back on the bed. His wife, Michelle — strongboned, intensely beautiful — sits in a chair nearby. Gato’s English is uncertain. Michelle’s is perfect; she translates for him when necessary. They speak to each other with great passion, without guile, in constantly alternating verses ofTtalian and of rapid, elegant Argentinian Spanish. (“Allende” is pronounced “Ah-z/?en«-day,” for instance.)
Gato has come to Los Angeles to play at the Hollywood Palladium, on a bill with John Klemmer and Alice Coltrane, as a part of a nationwide Impulse Records tour. His group includes, a stageful of American and South American musicians, some playing conventional instruments, some playing a panoply of exotica from Brazil, Argentina, efc. — drums and horns and harps and the like. His group creates deep, rich, Byzantine textures for him to play against, for him to rip out of; Gato himself grows more and more (musically) muscular, more passionate, more inflamed. He is hot.