Guillermo Klein via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Guillermo Klein:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Guillermo Klein
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Guillermo’s father presented him with a piano when he turned 11 years old and, inspired by the legendary Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla, Guillermo promptly began his experimentation with songwriting.
He left Argentina to attend Berklee College of Music after hearing a moving speech by the former dean Gary Burton about his relationship working with Piazzolla. Klein intended to study classical music on his arrival but found himself among peers that were passionate about jazz.
The music of Wayne Shorter provided the bridge from classical to jazz studies. Being a fan of unique harmonic expression, Klein was easily drawn to the work of this master composer who is deemed to be one of the most intriguing harmonic architects in jazz. Klein was also able to develop a talented network of musical friends, many of which came to Berklee from South America. This group of colleagues provided the framework for what would eventually become Klein’s main musical voice, the Big Van large ensemble that would later become Los Guachos (roughly speaking, The Bastards).
After graduating from Berklee Klein moved to New York City like many of his fellow graduates. He settled into Greenwich Village and quickly became associated with a jazz club called Smalls, where he established a weekly engagement with his 17-piece Big Van band that incorporated musicians living in New York as well as commuters from Boston.
Smalls was critical in fostering a community of young artists that would ultimately be some of the most influential voices of modern jazz.
Klein later scaled the band down to a more streamlined 11 piece unit...Los Guachos. The band continued to develop with the help of residences at Smalls and, later, the Jazz Standard. After recording an album that was ultimately shelved, Klein was able to find a home with Sunnyside Records. The label released two CDs by Los Guachos, Los Guachos II (1999) and Los Guachos III (2002).
Even with media attention and devoted fans, Klein found it increasingly difficult to make a living as a working musician in the States. He moved back to Argentina in the early fall of 2000 with his wife. While in Argentina, Klein was able to make another recording alongside local musicians, Una Nave (2005). He stayed in Argentina for two years before moving to Barcelona, Spain.
Since then Guillermo has moved back to Argentina, and then back to New York City, where he's been living since 2014.
Source & inspiration: Bret Sjerven / Sunnyside Records
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/7fuNFXQOOlUxcSJlHlAnxA
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/01qBCcpGlPtzlCbyVxWOH5
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/0AiRWZb25jF8ZuGUEGLQ0h
- ▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/0SJhbxZhLwEidNhGrDZcEV
- ▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/2AjkYe6mRToTsLRrzkjCiB
- ▶ Spotify 6: http://https://open.spotify.com/album/0KgXtvBxrwVlodIjn2vQkx
- ▶ Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/arts/music/guillermo-klein-los-guachos.html
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
