Pablo Garrido (composer)

Pablo Garrido Vargas (born March 26, 1905 in Valparaíso , † September 14, 1982 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean composer , violinist and ethnomusicologist .

Life

Pablo Garrido came from a family of musicians. He took piano lessons at the age of four and violin at the age of seven and played in a folk orchestra led by his older brother Juan Santiago Garrido . His first composition premiered when he was eighteen years old.

With the founding of the Royal Orchestra in 1924 he became a pioneer of jazz music in Latin America. His orchestra was a precursor to the big band of three violins, three saxophones, two trumpets, clarinet, trombone, tuba, banjo, percussion and piano with which he performed in Valparaíso. On an extensive trip through Latin America and Europe he learned a. a. Paul Whiteman , George Gershwin and Duke Ellington know.

After his return to Chile, he led a quintet as violinist, which included saxophonists Julio Sein and Jorge Martínez , as well as the orchestra of the Casino of Viña del Mar, which played with musicians such as the trumpeter Samuel Contreras , the pianist Eugenio González and the guitarist Augusto Brown and the violinist Carlos Salas performed. With Brown and Salas he founded the trio Los Todos .

Influenced by jazz music, Garrido composed pieces such as Jazz Window for saxophone and piano, the first Chilean composition for this wind instrument, and Black Fire , which he wrote for violinist Carlos Salas . At the same time he published interviews with band leaders such as Bernardo Lacasia , Lorenzo D'Acosta and the Uruguayan Buddy Day in the series Recuento integral del jazz en Chile . In a concert series for symphonic jazz he led a. a. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and his own Rapsodia chilena para piano y orquesta .

In the early 1940s, Garrido turned away from jazz and dealt with Chilean folklore. In 1943 he directed the Caravana de la Música Chilena , a tour project with which he traveled through southern Chile and Argentina to Buenos Aires. He has also performed with Luis Aguirre Pinto , the pianist Pedro Mesías , the cellist and guitarist Luis Silva and the singer Carmen del Río .

From 1948 to 1952 Garrido lived in New York, from 1958 to 1960 he made another trip to Latin America, and from 1965 to 1966 he toured Europe. On all these trips he gave lectures on Chilean folk music. In addition to more than 2000 articles in newspapers and magazines, he published Biografía de la cueca in 1943 , in which he pointed out the African roots of Latin American music at an early stage.

In the field of classical music, Garrido et al. a. four ballets , two piano concertos , a string quartet and other chamber music works, a violin sonata and piano pieces.

Web links

• Curriculum vitae on Memoria Chilena , the Biblioteca de Chile