Genius and quarrelsome, innate talent and tireless worker, jazz legend with a private life as unique as the music he played on the piano, the figure of Tete Montoliu (1933-1997) marked a milestone by becoming the man who brought jazz to our country in the fifties, when only a few experts appreciated that music born and raised among the black population of the United States with which Tete identified since his youth. “When I hear a black man shout ‘Black is beautiful,’ I shout ‘Long live the Ampurdán!’, which is the same thing,” said Tete.
Now a book allows us to explore his life from the perspective of all the people who lived with the brilliant pianist, one of the greats of both jazz and Catalan music, whose legacy, according to the promoter Julio Martí, can be compared to both of Thelonius Monk or Bill Evans as well as those of Pau Casals, Andrés Segovia or Enrique Granados. Martí is one of the many names that appear in Round about Tete, by Pere Pons, a multifaceted look at Montoliu’s life, reflected in schoolmates, friends, lovers, musicians, journalists, photographers and programmers.
In total 21 direct testimonies to which are added fifty names such as Joan Manel Serrat, Josep Maria Espinàs, Núria Feliu, Johnny Griffin or Ron Carter, who over time crossed paths in the musician’s life, run through this choral story. put together by the journalist Pere Pons, who maintained a bond with Montoliu, both personal in recent years and professional during a much longer previous period.
Like so many geniuses, Tete Montoliu had a life full of contradictions. The talent he showed at the piano was supported by a private life marked by blindness that made him dependent on others, a situation that sometimes transformed into contempt for other people. Born at a time when the blind were considered purely and simply useless, Montoliu was lucky enough to fall into the hands of Petri Palou, a disciple of Ricard Vinyes, who agreed to teach piano to a blind person after consulting with the maestro Frederic Mompou, who in turn He once talked about it with Joaquín Rodrigo. “It only requires will,” responded the author of the Aranjuez Concert.
“He worked day by day, dedicated 100% to jazz, that’s why he didn’t divide the work,” explains Pere Pons, highlighting that Tete was very clear that they were not giving him anything, especially after traveling abroad, to Denmark, Holland, Germany, where “sometimes he returned home crying from the demands he placed on himself, and from the treatment that others gave him.”
Discovered by the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton during a visit to Barcelona to perform at the Hot Club, (“I have discovered the best pianist in Europe,” he stated at the time) Montoliu was capable of playing like a black man, and at the same time doing so in a way that No American musician would think of that or, as Tete himself said, “I play music from my country, but with a little more swing.” The value of his interpretations was soon recognized by jazz fans, who in Franco’s Spain were reduced to a handful of faithful among whom only the brilliant pianist saw himself capable of making a living playing that music, as saxophonist Ricard Roda remembers. . “Surprise, the unexpected, was his trademark,” Paquito D’Rivera remembers of him, “he was unpredictable.”
His wedding to the Cuban Pilar Morales forced him to taste the bitter gall of the prejudices of the Barcelona middle classes among whom he lived, in his apartment at 83 Muntaner Street. Although he already had a master’s degree in prejudice conferred for the blindness he had had since as a child, and which forced him to delve into his role as an interpreter, because unlike his colleagues he could not work as an arranger since he could not see the roles. His talent, worked through thousands of hours of listening and practice, allowed him to learn the scores by ear, and interpret them with any formation without the need to rehearse. “Tete said that rehearsals conditioned his originality,” recalls Pere Pons, “for him rehearsing was not playing but talking to the other person, knowing how they think, what they read, how they see life,” a human approach from which he interpreted the musical codes of jazz. “If they only talk about music, women and football, what stories can they tell when they play?” Tete lamented to Antonio Narváez, his road manager.
And speaking of prejudices, another one that he could not suffer was the one he felt about the Catalan people. “I am not Spanish, I am Catalan, and we Catalans are the blacks of Europe,” he said. Montoliu reflected this hallmark in his jazz interpretation of Catalan music classics such as La dama d’Aragó or El testament d’Amèlia, as well as in his approach to the members of Nova Cançó, among them a Joan Manuel Serrat with the one who would establish a lifelong friendship after meeting when a still young Noi from Poble Sec accompanied his father, a boiler repairman, to do maintenance on the one Tete had at home.
With a reputation for being surly, spendthrift and egomaniac, the witnesses who appear in the book give opposite images, from the admiration professed to him by Horacio Fumero, his double bassist for many years, or Valentí Grau, founder of the JazzCava of Terrassa, who defines him as “our Messi”, until the rejection of those who suffered his worst image, as was the case of Anna Mas, who as head of the Jamboree dealt with him. “He was not a good person,” he states in the book, calling Montoliu selfish and self-centered, “and his interests always came first.”
The positive side of this character was his infinite ability to play with the musicians he liked at home, surrounded by thousands of records whose location was known by heart. Also his acid sense of humor or his passion for Barça, which led to the legend that he followed the games with an earphone while playing, or his interest in the arts. He commissioned Braille translations of several literary works, including One Hundred Years of Solitude, an endeavor that led him to confront ONCE on occasion. Montoliu distrusted the association that, ironically, was the only one that after the pianist’s death opened a space dedicated to his memory of the best jazz pianist south of the Pyrenees.
Claiming his figure is the main objective of the new work by Pere Pons, created to demonstrate that the figure of Tete “is not an artifice”, as the testimonies of his artistic career relate, and to highlight the importance that it has had, in his opinion. of voices of culture such as Muñoz Molina, Espinés, Fernando Trueba or Ignasi Terraza. “He could be as important as Albéniz, Granados or Pau Casals,” says Pere Pons, while expressing his hope that one day the book will also be translated into Braille, the last tribute to this spoiled child of jazz, quarrelsome and sarcastic who, if not He left good memories for everyone, at least he knew how to make himself forgive himself with universal music.
