Following Lalo Schifrin—the initial Argentine to register a major influence on contemporary jazz, and the leader of the band in which Barbieri performed—Gato Barbieri became the second. His path traced a prolonged, zigzagging route between Argentina and North America. Early on he performed in the idiom of traditional Latin rhythms before abandoning those roots to pursue the jazz avant-garde during the 1960s; in the early 1970s he re-embraced South American sources, moved into pop and fusion by the late 1970s, and continued oscillating between approaches throughout the 1980s. American listeners first encountered him as an untamed force whose raw, keening tenor recalled the work of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. By the mid-1970s, however, his style and sound had softened on ballads such as “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” (the song he had long known as the classic bolero “Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado”) and Carlos Santana’s “Europa.” Across every stylistic turn, the impassioned Barbieri remained among the most nakedly expressive tenor saxophonists on record, at times heightening the intensity through spontaneous vocal exhortations.
Although several relatives were musicians, Barbieri did not begin playing an instrument until age twelve, when Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time” inspired him to take up the clarinet. After relocating to Buenos Aires in 1947 he pursued further private study, adopted the alto saxophone, and achieved national prominence by 1953 through his work in the Schifrin orchestra. Toward the end of the decade he began leading his own ensembles and switched to tenor sax. In 1962 he moved to Rome with his Italian-born wife; the following year, after meeting Don Cherry in Paris and joining his group, Barbieri immersed himself in the jazz avant-garde. He also appeared with Mike Mantler’s Jazz Composer’s Orchestra in the late 1960s, where his ferocious tone can be heard on the “Hotel Overture” from Carla Bley’s monumental Escalator Over the Hill.
Around the start of the next decade Barbieri gradually reversed direction, folding South American melodies, instruments, harmonies, textures, and rhythmic patterns back into his work. The live album El Pampero on Flying Dutchman and the four-part Chapter series on Impulse!—which delved into Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, and Argentine elements—earned him widespread jazz-world recognition and a growing audience on American college campuses. A commercial breakthrough arrived unexpectedly with his sensuous theme and score for the provocative 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, which elevated him to international stardom and festival headliner status in Montreux, Newport, Bologna, and elsewhere. A subsequent A&M contract in the United States yielded a string of gentler pop/jazz recordings in the late 1970s, among them the brisk-selling Caliente! In 1981 he returned to a fiercer, rock-inflected, South American-rooted sound on the live album Gato…Para los Amigos, produced by Teo Macero, before shifting back toward pop/jazz on Apasionado. His visibility in the United States declined later in the decade amid the rise of the restrained neo-bop movement.
After undergoing triple-bypass surgery and mourning the loss of his wife Michelle—his closest musical advisor—Barbieri remained largely inactive through much of the 1990s. He reemerged in 1997, delivering impassioned if somewhat circumscribed performances at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles and recording the relatively understated album Que Pasa for Columbia. Che Corazon appeared in 1999.
With the arrival of the twenty-first century, a steady succession of compilations and reissues of his earlier work surfaced. A fresh album, Shadow of the Cat, was released on Peak Records in 2002. He died in New York City in April 2016 at the age of eighty-three.
