“You will never be a good singer if you don't sing Lush Life,” Tete Montoliu told Laura Simó in the first meeting they had, at the end of the eighties. It was at a recital that the Barcelona singer gave with Lucky Guri in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, to which the internationally renowned pianist attended as an audience. Unknown to either of them, that meeting began a relationship that would unite them in numerous concerts and, ultimately, in 'Together again' (Swit Records), the album now published that includes the couple's performance in September 1994 in Calella de Palafrugell, and which serves as a tribute to the pianist in the year in which he would have blown out 90 candles. With the same will, a tribute will be held this Friday where the pianist Ignasi Terraza will take Montoliu's place, accompanying the voice of Simó herself. “It's a shame that she lives in Barcelona, in the United States people would already talk about her,” the pianist said of her last partner on stage.
“We had talked about making an album, but Tete got sick and left us very quickly,” explains Laura Simó about a frustrated effort that caused her many doubts when it came to publishing these recordings, which she herself has kept all this time. When she finally decided, she went with the desire to pay tribute to the pianist, and to do so she resorted to the recordings that she requested from the technicians at some concerts to use in rehearsals. “Sometimes we would get together at home with some friends and play Tete songs,” she remembers. Of all the recordings, they selected the one from Calella because it was one of the best preserved.
The concert, in quartet format with Horacio Fumero on bass and Peer Wyboris on drums, was part of the first edition of the Costa Brava Jazz Festival of Calella de Palafrugell, and started with the instrumental Calella's blues. “Tete always started his performances with a blues,” comments pianist Ignasi Terraza; She “used to do it without a previous theme, she made up a melody on the fly.” The repertoire includes pieces such as Waltz for Debby, by Bill Evans, It's alright with me by Cole Porter or Come rain or come shine, by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. Of course, Lush Life could not be missing, a song that was not played that night, so a recording made in Vigo with the same line-up has been included.
Simó remembers how the day after his first meeting with Tete he looked up the topic, which he didn't know, and began to rehearse it, until years later they both met at a dinner in Barcelona. “Are you Laura Simó?” Tete asked. “I was very candid and I answered yes, and that I had learned the song,” recalls Simó, to which the pianist replied: “Well, tonight you will sing it with me.” Said and done, that night at the Jamboree they sang together for the first time, piano and voice, and when they finished the pianist told him “come home tomorrow, we will start rehearsing for the tour.”
From those three years of collaboration, from 1993 to 1995, Simó has fond memories of Tete, whose direct and sometimes aggressive character is proverbial. “I met him at a very sweet moment, he was married, happy, with a sense of humor, and he made it very easy for me,” without forgetting that he was a good accompanist, “not all pianists know how to accompany a voice.”
In addition to Together again, the collaboration between Laura Simó and Tete Montoliu will be resurrected by the concert series Tot rememberant tete, where the singer will be accompanied by the Ignasi Terraza Trio, which includes Horacio Fumero – Montoliu's double bass for 20 years. and the drummer Esteve Pi, together with the big band Girona Jazz Project, directed by Perico Sambeat. Some performances that will be very special for Terraza, also blind, who met Montoliu when he was only 14 years old, when he was beginning his piano studies. Self-taught in jazz, Terraza explains how the figure of Montoliu served as an incentive in his career: “Seeing a musician who played at that level means that it is possible, that there are no insurmountable impediments.”
“He told me that if I needed anything, any sheet music, to go see him, so I went to his house.” In this way he began a relationship of admiration, although he never became her student. “The greatest class he gave me was one day when I asked him about a song he had played, Tete played it once from top to bottom, and when I told him there was a part that I didn't know how to play he replied: 'you won't wait Let me touch it twice.'” Self-taught in jazz, Terraza explains how the figure of Montoliu served as an incentive in his career: “Seeing a musician who played at that level means that it is possible, that there are no insurmountable impediments.”
This coming Friday, the group will perform at the Once auditorium in Barcelona, which houses one of the few spaces dedicated to the memory of Tete. “This country has a short memory, we forget quickly,” says Simó. “In the end he had his recognition,” Terraza remarks, “but if he had had more, he would be more present today.”
