Luis Vivanco

Don't have the website. I was born in Santiago de Chile. None of my family is a musician. I started hearing music in serious at four years old. Artists: Chubby Checker, Patachou, Paul Robeson, Paul Anka, etc. At 9 yrs old, my parents, surprised to see I had an enthusiasm for music (Bach, Tchaikovski, Dvorak and a few others) enrolled me in piano lessons in a vain intent to thwart my musical interests. After four yrs, the project showed its failure, for though I loathed piano (and piano lessons) I still liked music.

At 12 started to hear first Jazz records. Glenn Miller, Satchmo & his all stars, etc. then, for some time, got a thing about tropical & latinamerican music (tango, cumbia, rumba, etc.).

At 15 regained my interest in jazz: heard a lot of records by Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, a lot of Ella (especially the Cole Porter Song Book. In love with that since), Jimmy Giuffre, Mal Waldron, Pepper Adams, Les Brown, and the strange Eric Dolphy. At 16, in Jan, 1974, bought my first two record album: Benny Goodman (Victor). I decided I wanted to play clarinet. In about april that year, one of the friends of my family in the small Chilean colony at my hometown, being himself a Jazzist (traditional & dixieland) lent me his clarinet for “four weeks” that expanded for more than six months. After practicing every day one hour or more, I could play surprinsingly well, with not such a bad sound,... and follow a lot of records, especially the old ones (Freddie Keppard, Jimmy Noone, Frank Teschemacher, King Oliver, the lousy Mezz Mezzrow, etc.). I tried to imitate some clarinetists I liked very much. Mostly, to this day: Edmond Hall. Also, but less: Tony Scott & Buddy de Franco. Hated: Pee Wee Russell & Lester Young in clarinet.

From 1974 to 1979: a time of learning & studying. Hated both &$/%/&% things, but found after some time that I had learned a lot. Had two clarinet professors. The first went mad. The other was an exclarinetist in the Band of General�-simo Franco of Spain. We talked a lot, he was very cultured, especially in literature. It was a kind of polite gentlemanly agreement between us that I didn`t like very much the scholarly thing on clarinet, and he kindly & generously accepted such point of view, and didn't stress the damn thing in an instructional way.

In 1978 I organized my first concert in the auditorium of a very staunch catholic association. I remember I tried to dress all of us, teenagers mostly, in suit & tie. Everybody was very stiff. The concert was mainly on Renaissance music (Susato, Pretorius, etc.) and at last, JAZZ: “Don't be that way”. I played that. It drew entusiasm of all, even the priests. I wish I had some photos of that.

1979 my father died, and next year had to start working on something in order to bring some bread and wine to the house. A friend who also liked jazz and heard with me a lot of records during hours, asked me to play saxophone in the debut of a singer now luckily forgotten. Told him I had no sax, but he had a tenor, and he lent it to me, one week prior the show. I think I played hideous for months, but in the middle of the orchestra, nobody noticed it very much, and in fact, were very gentle about it.

Then I started playing music with a group kinda Jazz, but not real Jazz, but stuff like SpyroGira or the Crusaders. We had two girls singers, both very comely, to be sincere. I didn`t like it very much playing such stuff, but at least it wasn`t “salsa” or something worse. We did a lot of presentations & shows. Earned some money, which they handed me everytime in an envelope, which I handed to my mother neatly. We bought a lot of rice with it, and even some meat. Worked in a lot of Night clubs from 1980 to 1984. Some were nice places, full of very merry girls who smiled a lot & sincerily; others were less agreeable, with girls less merry and decidedly ugly, smiling sparingly. The clients at their best tolerated Jazz, and at their worst almost kick our asses for playing such music. Fellow musicians who didn`t play jazz came to hear us. Even know some musicians, like me in their fifties, tell me how they liked to hear me play then.

From 1984 to 1993 almost made no music. Busy being a history professor in a school at the other side of the lake, and also married, and then had my daughter, which, in an atavistic damn cursed way, also made her to have piano lessons. My saxophone & clarinet gathered dust for yrs, except when I played alone in the house. My wife does not hate me playing saxophone & clarinet, and even helped me when we were dating, carrying both when I had a gig. We married in 1985, but even now I can make her carry both instruments at least to my car, when going for a gig. I have a very well trained wife, something I advise fellow musicians to have.

In 1993 I started playing Jazz again, with some guys of the new generation, which liked to hear a lot of people I saw with distrust or skepticism, like Chick Corea, “Rippington”, Michael Brecker, the last Coltrane and such. Never liked very much such stuff. Never liked very much what was done in the seventies & eighties (very much disapointed at how Miles Davis gave up to the times, but then, nobody knows what goes inside every life. Life is hard).

But then came the Marsalis, and James Moody and others, which I liked them very much (also Diana Krall, Diane Schuur, Eliane Elias, etc.). But the music of the more advanced musicians is much too difficult for me: much scales and entangled keys. Had my share with Schoenberg & Messiaen: that's enough for me (and I love much of their music). But difficult Jazz always has fascinated me: What Lee Konitz & Warne Marsh made in the early 50s, with Lennie Tristano, for example. I would give the money I don't have to play half of that.

From 1995 to 2010, I took part in many concerts, festivals and encounters of Jazz in my country, mainly in my city and the city of Mérida, in the Andes. There is still a newer minority generation which likes Jazz. Will their enthusiasm wither? God Knows. Now, I'm still active in a nightclub restaurant, where I play tropical slow & romantic music, and waltzes, and r a r e l y one or two of the only Bossas my pianist knows. He doesn`t know any Jazz.

Thank God, I do not live of music: I would be making a “dying” rather than a living out of it. I work as a philosophy professor at the main university in town. Now near my retirement, I know much of the dreams have gone. But I still enjoy living, hearing music, and playing once in a while.

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