“My research is to capture through my eyes the passion that a musician transmits in a note, a unique and unrepeatable moment, and to bring that emotion to the observer”, says Adriana Mateo, an Argentine photographer who has lived in New York since 1992.
will exhibit A look at Roy Hargrovean exhibition on the trumpet player, who passed away in November 2018, a Bebop, from Thursday 10 November to 28 February 2023.
Adriana settled in New York to earn her master’s degree in film and direction, and never returned. While she was doing her master’s degree, the project to make a documentary was born, to which her father, director of photography Roberto Mateo, suggested: “If you are going to make a documentary, you understand the idea better”.
“What I like most is the music. I had already had an experience with music and photography. At the age of 14, I photographed Elis Regina while she did fake shiny, In the Janeiro River. When I left the concert I said to my father: I already know what I want to do. ‘What, sing?’ he asked in a surprised voice.) “No, I told him to take a picture,” Mateo said during the chat with Clarín.
Photo in a jazz club
Near New York University, where I was studying, was Bradley’s, a jazz club where musicians met after hours to chat and a jam session was organized every evening.
“I didn’t know anyone. I started taking pictures that, from time to time, I gave them to them and so I made myself known. Soon after, Cedar Walton, Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins invited me to their concerts and even gave me a pass. as a photographer. Here’s how this story unfolded. Those photos were then used for promotion and also for record covers, like that of Cedar Walton, which was the one on his latest CD “, recalls Mateo, who discovered in those meetings that there were three generations of jazzmen at Bradley’s.
“There were artists in their sixties with others between 30 and 40, who all shared the nights in those jams. The project was born like this: I proposed it to Rollins, Brubeck, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess and others, and they all accepted. It was around this time that I also became friends with Christian McBride, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Benny Green and Roy Hargrove, who was not a very sociable person. “
Meet Hargrove
“Roy Hargrove was in his golden age, all the time on tour, and when he stopped in New York I explained the project to him and he loved it. There was something special because he was from my generation, my age, but he played with both an older generation and his contemporaries. I was playing with Heath, Wess and so many others, “he said.
What developed the bond between Hargrove and Mateo was the way of life. “Roy played every night and I did the same thing: I took pictures every night. There was no need to call him, he knew he would play. He did what he loved every day, that is, he played and that lifestyle was what I intended to do. Him in the music and me in the image. That’s why friendship blossomed. “
-Why is the exhibition dedicated only to Hargrove?
– Initially I was going to exhibit my sample Three generationsbut during a chat with Aldo Graziani, owner of Bebop, there was a wine on the table with a label that somehow reproduced the album cover tutu, by Miles Davis, and I told him that if you have Miles Davis in the wine, let the sample come from Hargrove and we decided to think about it. When I leave Uriarte, a sign appears that says “Roy”, and when I turn around it says “Fitz Roy” and there, I knew, this champion is for Roy.
The sample
I’m eleven photos of the musician and a very large 2 x 3 meter statue of Liberty taken from the terrace of his studio. “The story is that one day he came to my studio in Brooklyn and the main view from the terrace is of the Statue of Liberty. Roy sitting on the terrace says to me, seeing the rays of the sun through the clouds that illuminate the statue: “This is jazz”. I waited six months for the right time to get the same light and take it out, I did it with my Hasselblad, ”added the artist.
-You were his personal photographer, how was that treatment?
-It was not a bargain, it emerged as a conclusion; It was a mutual choice, one day she told me that you are my personal photographer. I was traveling on his tours and met all the different musicians in his quintet. And the conclusion was that every sideman he chose became a leader, that’s why so many changes in his group, because everyone had to follow his path and I believe that the imprint was generated in me too. I was also the personal photographer of Jimmy Heath and Cedar Walton.
Roy and the flugel
“On the first international tour I did with Roy and his band we went to Rio de Janeiro, in 2008. At that time I suggested that he play the flugelhorn (an instrument that has a rounder, softer and sweeter sound than the trumpet) especially for ballads. Up until that moment he only played the trumpet and to please me he said to me: ‘Well, I’ll play it’, and the first time he did it was at the Rio Jazz Festival. “
And he adds: “It is the first photo of Roy playing the flute and he liked its sound so much that he gradually incorporated it into his concerts. Later they said that due to his illness he had adopted him (he suffered from severe kidney failure). because it required less effort Nothing to do with it, he adopted it because he liked what it conveyed, it sounded like no other. “
he hasn’t stopped playing
“When Bradley closed, all that movement moved to the Zinc Bar, which I took as a studio because as well as having a huge piano, it was closed during the day and not being used. In 2014 I had a private session with Hargrove and I remember him playing from when he arrived until he left. He didn’t speak, he played. She told him where he was supposed to be and he came and went, but he always played. In the photo he is concentrated, he plays for him ”.
Director of the Gillespie All Stars
“I particularly like this photo because he is directing, something that not everyone knew or saw him do. Here with the Dizzy Gillespie All Stars, in Pennsylvania, in 2012, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of saxophonist Frank Wess; there is Jimmy Heath, among others and I got him at the end of one of the strongest songs of the night in which he appears as transported ”.
sitting at the piano
Mateo is also the official photographer of Umbria Festival, Italy, where Hargrove performed with his quintet in August 2018. “He was fragile on that tour and it’s his last photo outside the United States. Very fragile, for the first time I saw it delicate “.
“He arrived early at the theater, in Perugia, for the sound check and before the musicians settled down, he sat at the piano, with a cigarette in his mouth and started playing. It was a magical moment, he was in front of him, an exact image of him and the piano, as if he were inside the instrument. I saw an end, I live and die playing and I felt in that moment that the piano contained it. I felt it, it is so I live and die, playing and died three months later, “said Mateo The photo was awarded by the United States Association of Jazz Critics.
Information: A look at Roy Hargroveby photographer Adriana Mateo, from Thursday 10 November to 28 February, from 7.00 pm, at Bebop, Uriarte 1658. Free admission.
Source: Clarin
