Horacio Fumero arrived in Barcelona on a Sunday morning in 1972 on a cargo ship, after a month of traveling across the Atlantic. He didn't even know what city he was in when he first came down to port and the Yugoslav sailors knocked on the cabin door to say “siamo arrivaltti”. Where are we?, Horacio asked, “Spagna, Barcelona,” they responded before evacuating the three friends who had arrived in Europe in search of unreachable musical paths from Cañada Rosquín, in the Argentine Pampa.
The first objective of that trip was to play at the Montreux festival, and then, Europe. After he has ended up becoming a permanent residence in Barcelona, a family and four decades of musical career where he has performed with leading musicians, especially with Tete Montoliu. A tour to which the Voll-Damm Jazz Festival pays tribute, which this year dedicates the Artist's Portrait to him with five concerts, one of them, perhaps the most emotional, this Thursday in the Luz de Gas room with his daughter Lucia . Club Vanguardia members have a 15% discount if they buy tickets through Vanguardia Tickets.
“My daughter and I opened on Thursday, I've known her since she was born,” Fumero jokes while remembering how he always intended for Lucia to learn music, not to become a professional. "Music is important, everyone should be able to play an instrument, but the profession of musician is something else that has nothing to do with it, there are those who are good musicians but are not interested in the profession." He encouraged Lucia to train as a pianist first at the municipal conservatory, then in Rotterdam and finally at Esmuc, “but he did not insist that she take the stage.” She did that alone, and in her career she has met her father, who is also her neighbor in the Sants neighborhood.
From this union Los Fumeros was born, a duet album where father and daughter recover the Latin American songs that were played in their house. “I always listened to music from there, she was in the car, at home, she has grown up with all this so it is logical that it is part of her culture.” Their connection flows thanks to Lucia's rhythm, "it's very precise, we understand each other very well, the notes are ultimately decorations, but the rhythm is fundamental."
The double bassist was surprised to be chosen for the Portrait of an Artist, “I don't play a solo instrument, I'm more the one in the shadows,” he comments. But he didn't back down, encouraged by the numerous duets he's done throughout his career, where he's also led projects. “Duos are my specialty, I love playing with another person, a dialogue with people I understand well, it is structured without being a closed thing,” and he remembers his recent collaboration with Rita Payés, double bass and trombone, “can you imagine?” ? “People were delighted.”
Rita, together with the pianist Xavi Torres, will star on December 23 in one of the duets organized by the festival, a tribute to Fumero's role as a teacher. He met both musicians as students at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (Esmuc), where he has taught (he has also done so at the Conservatori del Liceu) from its foundation until last September, when he retired. “Esmuc was the first school in Spain to include a higher level of jazz; until then, education only considered classical music,” he recalls, “but there are other types of music, and in fact the jazz departments are the ones that have the most applicants.” . Fumero highlights that he took his teaching role very seriously, “when they offered me the position, the first thought was “what if my children ever study at a higher music school?”, a premonition that came true, with the father playing at Lucia's final concert, shaking with emotion.
The other duo of the festival links jazz with another of their great passions, flamenco, on December 16 with Bill McHenry and Pedro Javier González. “McHenry is a jazz musician par excellence, I met him at a very young age and we started playing very early,” he points out about the American sax player. Pedro Javier's guitar will accompany him in the flamenco part, a genre that has fascinated the Argentine "since I heard it for the first time, that thing about Camarón with Paco de Lucía drove me crazy." Fumero remembers the rhythmic similarities between flamenco and Argentine folklore, “I like it very well, although I had to learn everything else.” A path that he made hand in hand with his partner on the guitar on December 16. “At first it is very Martian, it seems like they are doing anything but no, it is something very armed,” he says of his flamenco learning. They met Pedro Javier through Toti Soler, “we started seeing each other regularly and suddenly we realized that we had a repertoire, that's when we started performing gigs.”
For the last concert, on December 30, Fumero will be left alone on stage, a possibility that had never crossed his mind until a former student, Juan Pablo Barcazar, proposed that he perform this way in a series of double bassists. in room 23 Robadors. “It didn't occur to me to make standards, many people had already explained this,” he highlights to explain the repertoire, made up of pieces inspired by Argentine folklore. “When you get older, childhood appears at a gallop, it's a strange thing,” that's why when you pick up this music it feels authentic, “it's my experience, how a black man from Mississippi can play blues, that's why I chose some Argentine tangos, and some Brazilian choro.”
Now away from Argentina, Fumero observes with concern the electoral victory of Javier Milei, "that country has been going down for 60 years, and when you think that we have hit rock bottom, it turns out that no, it can go down further." From there he left at the age of 23 to end up in Geneva, where he met his wife, before traveling to Spain. He lived in Valencia while performing in the Three Sad Tigers, he passed through Madrid to play with Pedro Iturralde, a city that “reminded me of some things about Buenos Aires that I didn't like very much,” and after an experience in Las Alpujarras he ended up in Barcelona. hand of Javier Mas, Leonard Cohen's guitarist for more than 20 years. “I came to visit Javier and this was my real arrival in Barcelona, I liked it and I stayed here.”
