November 2019

THE LATIN RECORDING ACADEMY HONORS HUGO FATTORUSO WITH THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 

Iconic Uruguayan keyboardist, singer, and composer Hugo Fattoruso is known for blending rock and roll, electric jazz, and bossa nova with traditional styles and creating his own contemporary sound, which led to a number of key records that span the past six decades of Latin music. Fattoruso began playing the piano professionally at age 12 with his father and brother Osvaldo—a lifelong collaborator—as part of Trío Fattoruso. In the mid-'60s he founded Los Shakers, which became one of the first bands to define the rock en español genre. The band's 1968 album, La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto's Bar, was a definitive masterpiece of the genre, and the next year Fattoruso and his brother released La Bossa Nova De Hugo Y Osvaldo. Fattoruso spent most of the '70s in the United States playing with the trio Opa before moving to Brazil in the '80s, where he worked with a gallery of musical giants, from Milton Nascimento and Chico Buarque to Djavan and Maria Bethânia. In recent years, Fattoruso has performed in a variety of formats and settings, continuing to explore the fusion of jazz and South American folk. His discography includes dozens of albums, rich in innovation and experimentation. 

July 2018

Fattoruso - La Película (The Movie)

June 2020

Rolling Stone

One night in February 2019, in the Santa Ana resort, a few kilometers from Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, the HA Duo, with Hugo Fattoruso on keyboards and vocals, and Albana Barrocas singing, playing drums and percussion, performed. Local residents have just opened a simple restaurant with live music around a stove. Hugo and Albana arrive from Montevideo in a car that they also use later as a dressing room, to rest and eat some Olympico sandwiches. The site is, no more and no less, a mountain with forest and full moon.

By then, the 76-year-old Uruguayan musician had already received a call from the Latin Grammy director, announcing that they wanted to give him the Award for Musical Excellence. But Hugo had replied that certain commitments prevented him from traveling. And why don't you give it to me next year,? he said to the anxious manager who was calling him from the United States. So with that the organization agreed to postpone the award until the following year, on the condition that he keep it a surprise. For a whole year, he didn't even tell his mother.

Finally, last November came the day to celebrate with his family in Las Vegas. His four children and several grandchildren traveled from different parts of the world. ”I never expected or should be in this kind of consideration. I think that the recognition is due to the number of years that the head is lowered, like in a platoon of bicycles,” says the musician. And right away he feels the need to name so many colleagues with whom he rubs shoulders and regularly plays with. “Here, in Uruguay, there are a few who deserve it, who are in line before me. The award is also a recognition of the Uruguayan music industry. In any case, for being the beneficiary, I appreciate it.”

”Twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to photograph the Trio Fattoruso. Hugo, his brother Osvaldo (who died in 2012) and Hugo’s son Francisco gave an open-air show on a huge stage on the slopes of Cerro Catedral, in Bariloche, for the Seven Lakes Jazz Festival, in October 2000.” The Trio Fattoruso was the first formation in which the brothers Hugo and Osvaldo, together with their father, Antonio, began to make music. Hugo was seven years old when the Kings gave him a piano accordion. And Osvaldo's destiny was given in the drums. Antonio built a homemade double bass with an inverted wooden bucket and a broomstick. Josefina, the boys' mother, remembered that as soon as Hugo hung up the instrument, he came out playing, and that Osvaldo was barely seen behind the drums. Already in the 50s they worked as musicians, hired for meetings and birthdays. Images and testimonies of those times are shown in the film Fattoruso, the film by Santiago Bednarik, released in May 2017 in Montevideo.

For every Uruguayan, for sure, Hugo Fattoruso is a hero. For Argentina, Brazil and many other parts of the world’s musicians, Hugo is a lighthouse, an inspiration that opened the universe of drums and candombe. Admired by Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Litto Nebbia and Fito Páez, who defined the infinite capacity of Hugo's music as “mischievous and unusual, crossed by tradition and modernity.”

León Gieco assures that rock would have been something else if the Shakers had not existed, that emblematic formation of which Hugo was a part in the sixties. "Many people talk to me about Shakers, but that group was not from the River Plate, it was something else. As soon as it ended, I began to propose my ideas in fusion music, which I can also call Afro-Montevideo, Urban-Uruguay, or Montevideo,” says Fattoruso.

The Shakers sold thousands of albums released in various countries in America. They were some River Plate Beatles who copied the sound of the songs with English lyrics and appropriated the resource of clothing and hairstyles. But a contract with the record label made the royalties negligible. "We did not see a peso," summarizes Hugo.

When Shakers ends, Hugo moves to Buenos Aires and, some time later, together with Osvaldo, they travel to the United States and form the Opa trio with Ringo Thielmann. Opa records the album Fingers with the Brazilian musician Airto Moreira, with good international repercussion. Years later, a song from that stage was used as official music for the 2014 Brazil World Cup. Moreira claimed responsibility and Hugo demanded that his part be recognized. Today he tells it as an anecdote from the past. "I quit," he says, fed up with the subject. “That music has a part of this man, eight bars of mine, and the part of this man ends, and then I wrote the end. ¿Tá? He changed the name and named his daughter as the author. It was recorded in 1972, the daughter was then one year old. I see the score on the Internet of a work of mine, but who wrote it? Diana Moreira. With one year! Amazing! Better than Mozart!”

After several years in the United States, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he became the pianist of great singers such as Djavan, Chico Buarque and Milton Nascimento. But in 1989 he decides to return to Uruguay to dedicate himself fully to his own music. On his return, he also began to play with Jaime Roos and since then he has remained a member of his orchestra. “I am two people when I play with Jaime's orchestra: the session player and a tremendous fan. I love it! The musicians are nineteen columns and he is the entire building. Each one has a precise, marked and important part. My way of playing fits, Jaime likes it and I like it. I am a keyboard player and accordion player, as I always did.”

The shows of Jaime Roos, “Half a Century,” are still scheduled from August 6 to 12 at the Auditorio Nacional del Sodre, in Montevideo. But, of course, the coronavirus pandemic put any plan on hold. In January, when we had the first talk for this interview, Fattoruso's projects spanned the entire year. Now, the Covid-19 keeps him at home, in the La Comercial neighborhood of Montevideo, despite the fact that in Uruguay quarantine is not mandatory, constantly streaming music and videos. In recent days, for example, a new song came out with the Argentine band Lo Pibitos. Percussionist Juan Lucas Arbe referred to the theme (which is voiced by Facundo Cabral) excited to have one of the great music superheroes.

In a room in his house there is an upright piano and stools. Prepare barley tea and when invited gives the instructions for the delicious infusion. "When it starts to boil for three minutes, you turn it off, let it cool, put ice on it and that's it. A natural iced tea!” The black balls of barley traveled from Japan to Hugo's, along with other species that fascinate him. “This year it was to be the fourteenth consecutive tour with the Dos Orientales duo. And my twentieth time in Japan.”

He refers to the duo that he forms with the percussionist Tomohiro Yahiro, who already has three albums. The tour would cover more than twenty cities in a month and a half. "Being able to go to Wonder (that's how he refers to Japan) makes me very happy," says Hugo.

Sitting with his back to the piano to talk, every so often he turns his bench for some chords, sometimes as an example of what he says, and others, because he would rather be practicing. It is intuited that this is the place where more hours of his life pass. “While I cook I go and come to the piano, I practice all day. In my case, it is very important to study. I train as a volleyball or basketball player. For my compositions or my son's athletics my fingers have to be in shape. It is like when you take the bike to the starting line, you can not go more or less. If I'm going to play the piano I have to go out with everything. For songs and ballads I don't need fingers, I accompany the song, but for instrumentals I have to be very oiled. If I played boleros or blues I would go fishing!”

Fattoruso thrives on Peruvian chamamé and waltzes, music from the plains and music from the Amazon, vallenato, cumbia and bagpipes. And from the music of the Arab countries that catches him on the computer. “There is a lot of feeling in him! I fall on my back! I like folk music without a credit card.”

In his chorizo ​​house, where his mother also lived until a year and a half ago, he has his rehearsal room. There you can see all kinds of instruments, even the original patch of the Los Shakers bass drum. He enters the room and comes out with a smile and a drum to take pictures.

Seeing him so comfortable in his place I ask him what life behavior he has. "Study and practice of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism," he replies. Ah! That was the secret! I tell him. "I don't know if it's a secret, I never talk about this, but if you ask me ... It is definitely essential for me."

June 2020 | Rolling Stone Magazine, Argentina

ALL ABOUT JAZZ

Trio Fattoruso: Trio Fattoruso

by TODD S. JENKINS 

Enlightening Uruguayan fusion for the new millennium. In the late 50s, young brothers Hugo and Jorge Fattoruso played in Uruguayan street festivals with their washtub-bassist father Antonio. A few years later the brothers founded the popular Latin-rock band Los Shakers, and eventually the New York fusion band Opa, which combined the traditional candombe rhythms of their homeland with red-hot fusion chops. They also performed with Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira in the 70s; Hugo was the principal writer on Airto’s 1973 album Fingers.

Forty-odd years later, back home in Uruguay, the brothers have reformed the trio with Hugo’s son Francisco on electric bass. Unlike the original trio, however, no street-busker folkiness here. The group’s breeding in multiple Latin and fusion styles results in a torrential downpour of fresh sounds. While the South American roots of Trio Fattoruso are evident, the disc isn’t as dominated by Latin rhythms and structures as one might expect. This is a matchlessly remarkable fusion effort, no matter what its nationality.

The pinpoint interplay of the three performers gels into a vital solidity, exemplified by the perfectly coordinated accents of piano, bass and cymbals on the intro of “Ahchi Kohchi”. The light-hearted waltz “Esa Tristeza” features a vocal by Hugo that recalls Michael Franks, but wittier and more mind-adhesive. “De Igual A Igual” almost reaches thrash-metal intensity at times, intercut with rapid minor passages. Drummer Jorge machetes his way through “Distortion Generator” beneath Francisco’s searing metal guitar and Hugo’s funky keyboard dance-quacks. “Gospel For J.F.P. III” sounds as if it was generated by a computer possessed by the Holy Spirit. It’s both unexpected and utterly uplifting, like many of the other selections here. While the band veers through wild stylistic changes from track to track, the disc never sounds unfocused. The variety is all part of the grand plan.

Hugo selects keyboard sounds that are both unusual and completely appropriate to the tunes. In other settings some of these tones might sound cheesy, but they work magically here. Hugo’s spidery rhythmic sense is also quite singular. The fleet, complex performances of Francisco and Jorge almost imply the presence of a few extra limbs. Francisco’s bass work is particularly invigorating throughout. He colors “Tiempo” with Pastorian harmonic figures, then moves into a melodicism reminiscent of Pat Metheny. While he has obviously done his homework regarding fusion styles, he takes it far beyond the usual aping of icons and into brand new territory. His emotive plucking on “Queixa” is firm enough to drive the mood home without overwhelming the underlying gentleness. And from the subtly complex lope of “S.T.C.-P.M.” to the pure crush of “De Igual A Igual”, Jorge is focused and wholly versatile as a drummer. He clings to these elaborate rhythms like white on rice but can stretch out like Silly Putty when needed.

Between them, the members of Trio Fattoruso have conjured a refreshing, consistently surprising disc. This Latin American family affair bears much repeated listening; one of the year’s most entertaining releases.

June 01, 2001