Died Toots Thielemans, the virtuoso harmonica – publico

 
         

                 

                         
                     

                         
                     

                 

 
 

The musician Toots Thielemans died on Monday aged 94, reported the Belgian newspapers. According to his Veerle Van de Poel agent, quoted by the newspaper Libération , Toots Thielemans died “during sleep”, a month after being hospitalized due to a fall.

Belgian musician and composer, considered the “king of jazz harmonic”, had ended his career in 2004. As a jazz critic PUBLIC, Rodrigo Amado, wrote on the subject of one of his return to Portugal, Toots Thielemans was a true pioneer of using this instrument in jazz. It was his virtuosity that led him to share the stage with giants like Charlie Parker or Oscar Peterson, through Bill Evans and Ella Fitzgerald.

“Jazz in Belgium was it,” writes the Belgian newspaper Le Soir , “and its harmonic symbolized this song.” According to a description of this newspaper, Toots Thielemans brought the instrument always get inside jacket pocket, close to his chest, and wore it constantly to express themselves.

Born in 1922 in Belgium as Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, changed his stage name to Toots Thielemans because the baptism had not swing sufficient account of the Le Soir . In 1947, only 25 years, will the United States and three years later he is making a tour with the sextet of American clarinetist Benny Goodman, which plays harmonica and guitar. In 1951 he emigrated to the United States and plays with a number of musicians, highlighting their obituaries performances with saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker, but also with the British pianist George Shearing, having built his quintet. It is at the end of 1962 that makes up the famous Bluesette in mixing their two “instruments” election, guitar and whistle. Give him international fame and becomes a standard

Your harmonic -. “the most famous in the world,” as he wrote to House music, when the Belgian was here in 2008 – appeared in television ads, the generic series Sesame Street and movies like the Cowboy Midnight (winner of three Oscars).

As told Publico in 2005, another of his performances in Portugal, parents, modest merchants Brussels, did not want her son to be a musician. Toots Thielemans also joined the university to be a math teacher, but the Harmonic led him to give up. The first of these instruments was purchased after seeing a film in which a man touches before being led to the electric chair. C omeçou as a hobby and continued “to be a hobby”, his “passion.” Instead of studying, he occupied the time to learn to play with the help of the few examples that were high, particularly Larry Adler, classic vineyard.

It was during World War II, with the German occupation, the jazz, as pointed out, found, because it’s never over. There is also the story of how he managed to play in ten minutes a melody of Fats Waller in a guitar, which is told Publico to explain how learned guitar listening repeatedly the great Django Reinhardt records.

At the end of the war , bebop breaks in the United States, “a revolution in jazz, comparable to Picasso in painting”. I wanted to become “modern” bebopper , forgot the harmonica and was playing with Benny Goodman, to emigrate to the US. As a guitarist in the George Shearing Quintet, where he spent most of the 50s, he met the great jazz. “They were all very good to me,” he said in the same interview. The biggest memory Qur had, however, was to have played with Charlie Parker. “Have I not called you to ask to play with him, it was he who called me. The manager told him if he wanted that Belgian kid harmonica, and I ended up playing the Charlie Parker All Stars, with Miles Davis, Milt Jackson … “

In the Career Review it did, Toots Thielemans said, then, his Brazilian phase. “The evolution of Brazilian music is very parallel to jazz. Bossa nova was bebop. “It was always close to the best artists of Brazilian popular music, from Elis Regina, with whom he recorded the album Watercolor , Caetano, Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento.

He recorded everywhere, with Billy Joel, Nick Cave, Pat Metheny, Natalie Cole. Many of the discs were recorded with Bill Evans; of everything they did together, according to the Le Soir , Toots Thielemans particularly enjoyed Affinity .