The Jazz Cat Homage To Gato Barbieri

for Paul, my friend for over fifty years This afternoon the two of us will perform a Memory Exercise, and hopefully we won't need a Memory Miracle to complete it. Miracles are the perogative of something higher and more abstract than two friends pooling their resources. Friendship and Music, for instance, are very compatible: they both can soar directly into the sun and reach the empyrean; or they both can settle into a comfortable routine; or music can be the background and friendship the fore- ground, or handy-dandy they can exchange ground. Our exercise will harmonize Friendship and Music on common ground for the duration of common time. It begins with the Jazz Cat you know so well, the Argentine wonder who surpasses every border, the master of the searing saxophone - GATO BARBIERI. You and three friends on a Sunday afternoon went to Orchestra Hall in a distant early autumn. Gato and Ensemble were the opening act for The Modern Jazz Quartet. What? Gato in second place! Well, what matters is performance, and so the four of you took your seats before an empty stage already electric with Jazz Energy and you added a frenzy of Jazz Talk. But you turned suddenly silent, turned inward, where the lyricism arises, where the music reposes before being composed, where you and Gato are in friendship. This is always the Soul Realm, and the Latin Soul was ascendent that day. Gato appeared before his band, playing a simple traditional melody on an Indian flute. It was as if a huge mirror descended before you, invisible to the others, and you saw your Indian Soul swelling to an impossible size and envelop you in its solar light. Then it withdrew, and Gato was simply performing and letting the magic happen as it is meant to. You were standing above your sitting self, two of you, one hearing sounds, the other seeing visions. This is called ecstasy. You felt the Latin Rhythms unleashed by Gato's music become the pulse of the Universe. You were at the center of this swelling energy in a state of perfect calm. And when Gato slipped the sax behind his back, grabbed the microphone with both hands, and began to sing, it was, you told me later, 'Earth's cry and Heaven's smile'. In the last moment, you saw him leave the stage, holding his sax in his right hand, raised high in the air, as if it were a banner or a talisman, or perhaps a golden bird perched there, ready to launch into flight. You turned and saw your three friends staring at you. In a flash you knew what that meant. Without a word exchanged, the four of you left Orchestra Hall. Any other music, however elegant and polished, would simply get entangled in the sounds still playing in your heads and mar both musics. When speech was restored and you all sat at a table on the Black Forest Inn, you all shared your words about the music and the sheer experience of being in Gato's orbit. You agreed it was Music of Rescue. You agreed it was Music of Necessity. You agreed... But inside, in the silence of the interior sea of being, you felt those those currents moving and knew they arise from even deeper Latin Rhythms of the Universe.