Barbican Contemporary Music Programme
Spring 2008
In April the London Latin Music Festival returns to the Barbican. As old as the century, La Linea has been defining and re-defining contemporary Latin music for the past eight years. Always exhilarating and always essential, in previous years the festival has brought the likes of Gotan Project, Seu Jorge, Pink Martini and Spanish Harlem Orchestra to the UK for the first time.
\'La Linea has built an impressive international reputation as one of the world\'s most eclectic celebrations of Latin Music.\' Time Out
Thu 10 Apr 7.30pm
Lalo Schifrin & LSO: Jazz Meets the Symphony
Produced by the Barbican
Barbican Jazz - part of La Linea Festival
Tickets £20/25/30
A very rare London appearance by one of the great jazz arrangers, pianist Lalo Schifrin. Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin into a musical family in Buenos Aires, Argentina (his father led the violin section of the orchestra at the Teatro Colón). At the age of six, Schifrin began to study piano with Enrique Barenboim, the father of the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Despite studying as a teenager with the Russian expatriate Andreas Karalis, former head of the Kiev Conservatory, Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires.
Nonetheless, it was music that captured his attention and at the age of 20, he successfully applied for a scholarship to the Paris Conservatoire. While there, he attended Olivier Messiaen\'s classes and formally studied with Charles Koechlin, a disciple of Maurice Ravel. At night he played jazz in the Paris clubs. In 1955, Schifrin played piano with Astor Piazzolla and represented his country at the International Jazz Festival in Paris.
Returning to Buenos Aires, he ran his own big concert band and then had a crucial spell as Dizzy Gillespie¹s pianist and arranger, who whom he composed two classic suites (Gillespiana and New Continent). He has also written for Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan and Jimmy Smith, among many others.
But it is his film and TV themes which have made him best-known to the wider public – which include Mission Impossible, Cool Hand Luke, Dirty Harry and Bullitt. He is also at home in the symphonic world and has written and conducted many classical works. He has so far won four Grammy Awards – out of twenty-one nominations - and received six Oscar nominations.
His Barbican programme, entitled Jazz Meets the Symphony, puts Lalo and his band in front of a 89-piece symphony orchestra to explore symphonic variations on Latin Jazz and perform some of his finest compositions. With Lalo will be a world-beating rhythm section of Pierre Boussaguet (bass) and Alex Acuna (drums), as well as trumpeter James Morrison.
\'Argentinian born jazz pianist Lalo Schifrin is one of the godfathers of ultra-cool film scores\' Looking-glass.co.uk
Concert at the Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Box Office: 0845 120 7550
For more information, photos or interview requests, please contact:
Alex Webb,
Media Relations Manager, Contemporary Music
barbican
t - 020 7382 6199
m - 07788 916768
e - awebb@barbican.org.uk