Gato Barbieri--阿根廷国宝级萨克斯演奏家，1924年11月出生在阿根廷。少年的Gato Barbieri虽然出身在一个音乐家庭里，但是他直到12岁，才在听了Charlie Parker的音乐后，开始学习音乐（竖琴），次年改学众音萨克斯，从而开始一步步走上了辉煌的道路。1953年他加入了Schifrin大乐队，开始赢得了更多人的注意，50年代后期，Barbieri开始带领自己的乐团。1962年他移居罗马，也在那里取了意大利裔的妻子Michelle，次年他在巴黎结识了小喇叭手Don Cherry，并加入Don Cherry的乐团，他们一起做巡回演出，所演奏的是前卫爵士。初期的Gato Barbieri在风格是比较狂野的，到了70年代中期才转为柔和，无论他走哪个方向，他的音乐总是可以带动人的情绪，引起很多感动。1970年 Barbieri回到阿根廷，他的音乐走向也做了些许改变，他在旋律节奏上加入更多的拉丁风格。1972年他也演出了电影Last Tango In Paris巴黎的最后探戈，这部讲男女情欲的电影，颇有争议，男主角是大名鼎鼎的马龙·白兰度，同时电影原声带也为Barbieri赢得了一做葛莱美奖。之后他忙碌于在许多知名的爵士乐节中演出。由于身体了动了几次手术以及妻子Michelle的过世，Barbieri在90年代的演出已经很少了。
 
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.