Roberto Lecaros
Roberto Lecaros
Genres: piano, jazz, avant garde, violin, jazz fusion
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About Roberto Lecaros
Roberto Lecaros Venegas (Santiago de Chile, August 11, 1944 - April 29, 2022) was the first jazz player in a clan of musicians that spans several generations. He is a charismatic, creative and complex figure in his essence, a fundamental name in the chronology of Chilean jazz since the beginning of the 1960s, who had staunch followers and great detractors throughout his career. Violinist, cornetist, tubist, double bassist and pianist, he performed in jazz without prejudice as an active name in both traditionalist environments and modernist scenes. But in his history the work of teacher appears as the activity with which he achieved the most, teaching the mysteries of this music to different generations, since the '80s. In 2014 he became the first jazz player to receive the title of Fundamental Figure of Chilean Music, awarded by the SCD. When the genealogy of the Lecaros family goes into the 19th century, the many characters who were linked to music end up getting lost. After Fernando Lecaros—popular musician of the '40s and the creator of the song "Mapuchina"—appears Roberto Lecaros. Before he could even verbalize ideas about music, the piano and accordion played for him daily. His father, Mario Lecaros Sánchez, was a popular musician. He was a member of the Sexteto Santiago, led by his brother Fernando Lecaros, and his house was frequented by Chilean music figures. Among them were the best jazz players of their time: Mario Escobar and Luis "Huaso" Aránguiz. Family celebrations included folk songs performed with harp, guitar and accordion. Same with tango, bolero and swing records. This microclimate would mark him forever. He began classical violin at age three, but became definitely involved with jazz when one afternoon in the late '50s he saw the Goodway Jazz Band perform at a dance. His director, clarinetist Juan Sillano, invited little Roberto to play the tuba in that show and he did so in such a way that he continued to participate in the band's rehearsals. Immediately afterwards he would join the Jazz Club and shortly after that he would start playing the cornet in the same Goodway Jazz Band, due to his ease in his approach to all instruments. He liked the music of Bix Beiderbecke and knew the harmonies of popular music well, so it didn't take long for the more experienced men in the club to notice the underage musician's burgeoning talent. His arrival at the Jazz Club meant a particular unfolding for him. Roberto Lecaros equally enjoyed classicism and the avant-garde. That's why he couldn't understand why traditional jazz players confronted modern jazz players so directly; he was ready to perform in both classical jazz bands and contemporary jazztets. During the '60s everything happened very quickly for Lecaros. Once Goodway disappeared, he continued as tubist for the band that succeeded it: the Santiago Stompers. But he also played the double bass — amazed by soloists like Paul Chambers or Sam Jones — for modern groups that emerged one after another among young jazz players: the Chilean Jazz Messengers (led by pianist Miguel Sacaan), the Nahuel Jazz Quartet (led by pianist Omar Nahuel) and the Village Trío, together with drummer Sergio Meli (a group in which he alternated as pianist and double bassist and which in 1965 recorded the eponymous Village Trío album). Between that brotherhood and the recording of that album, the 20-year-old singer Rita Góngora was also a part of it. At the same time he played bossa nova, bolero and chamber pop on the piano at the Nahuel Jazz Club. By 1969 he was one of the closest musicians of this pianist who initiated modern jazz in Chile. In the dramatic car accident that cost Omar Nahuel his life, Roberto Lecaros was also traveling. After that episode he performed as a classical double bassist in the Chilean Symphony Orchestra (1969-1972) and in the big band led by the clarinetist and arranger Luis Retamal. Upon entering the '70s he alternated jazz with a versatile role as a popular musician at the Capri Tavern. He went from swing to tropical and from tango to zarzuela with notable plasticity. At the Jazz Club he continued playing in reduced acoustic combos with his brother (also a multi-instrumentalist) Mario Lecaros, and then, in 1975, with Pablo Lecaros (18 years old), whom he started as a double bassist in the same way in that in 1965 he had done it with Mario when he was barely 15 years old. If the first of his instruments had been the classical violin, in the '80s he came to incorporate it into jazz, perhaps as a continuator of the line started by musicians of the '20s and '30s such as Pablo Garrido and Carlos Salas. At that time, Lecaros was beginning to immerse himself in the tradition of Stéphane Grappelli (whose French swing he developed in 1988 with guitarist Panchito Cabrera), but he soon fell into the electricity of Jean-Luc Ponty. In this jazz-rock line he came to found the Kameréctrica ensemble (1986-90), where musicians such as Sergio Tilo González, Marcelo Aedo and Juan Coderch passed through. At that point, a series of musicians who would later take over the scene of the '90s had been trained from his pioneering jazz school: Emilio García, Alvaro Bello, Jorge Rocha, Cristóbal Rojas, Pablo Paredes, Felipe Riveros, Carmen Paz González, Mauricio Rodríguez, Roberto Dañobeitía and Rodrigo Galarce and even the pop musician Jano Soto. Along the way he opened the club L'Atelier, on Calle del Arzobispo, where he introduced all these young jazz players to society. From that stage, in a live session, Lecaros would record his first album. Hot jazz (1994) presented a look at the most traditional forms of the genre. Already in 1995 he reestablished his school in Temuco, founded his club and continued as a pianist along with other family members. An Oscar Peterson inspired trio emerged in 1997 from the inclusion of his sons: double bassist Roberto Carlos Lecaros (18 years old) and drummer Félix Lecaros (16). Three years later, the same revisionist hard bop group would expand into a quintet with the additions of trumpeter Sebastián Jordán and tenorist Agustín Moya, and would be renamed La Tropa. But throughout his career from the '80s onwards, he kept active the group he called Lecaros Jazz Quartet, along with Mario (piano), Pablo (bass), Félix (drums) and sometimes Nené Lecaros (vocals). In 1995, the band of brothers came to play at the Chile Stadium as a preliminary number for the concert of the stellar trio formed by Al Di Meola, Jean-Luc Ponty and Stanley Clarke. In 2012, the album Lecaros Jazz Quartet was released, with fundamental compositions of theirs: "Cueca del Retorno" and "Tonada para la Pachamama", among others. The decade of the 2000s, with appearances, disappearances and reappearances, ended with a new recording. In Mística (2010), Lecaros recovered part of his historical catalog of compositions written as music for film, theater and documentaries in the '60s, '70s and '80s. Pieces in Latin American rhythms of bolero, bossa, chachachá and cumbia, all treated jazzically with his quintet La Tropa, revived the material he had prepared for films by directors such as Helvio Soto (Monday 1, Sunday 7, 1968) and Antonio Skármeta (Con ardiente paciencia, from 1984 and Farewell in Berlin, from 1985), among others. In 2013 he began recording his album 69, with the Animales en la Vía label, a number that showed how old the musician would have been that year. However, it was published in 2014, the same year that Lecaros was honored by the SCD as a Fundamental Figure of Chilean Music, the first jazz player to obtain this investiture. On this album, Lecaros went from piano to violin, and presented pieces for quartet in the same logic as Mística. He brought together the rhythm section of the publishing label: Jasper Huysentruyt (piano), Roberto Carlos Lecaros (double bass) and Matías Mardones (drums). In 2014 he received the distinction of Fundamental Figure of Chilean Music and in 2018 the musicologist Álvaro Menanteau wrote his monograph "Una vida en el jazz". Those were the last attempts of Roberto Lecaros as an open musician without stylistic prejudices within jazz. His instrumental multiplicity (violin, tuba, cornet, double bass and piano) and his multi-militancy prevented him from becoming a "concertist", but they gave Chilean jazz one of its most versatile and influential figures. In April 2022, Roberto Lecaros was giving a private concert when he suffered a multisystem failure, which ultimately caused his death. The musicians who surrounded him for decades said goodbye to him in the style of a New Orleans funeral, with music until the last goodbye. And in a statement released on the same day of death, the family noted that Roberto Lecaros had spent his last moments "doing what he loved most."
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