For those of you not in the know, on April 29th, 2022 tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro and pianist Thomas Enhco released Violeta y el Jazz, an album dedicated to the works of Chilean composer, singer-songwriter, and folklorist Violeta Parra.

The album marks the second release on Gonzalez Toro and his French Baroque ensemble I Gemelli’s newly minted Gemelli Factory label. Violeta y el Jazz includes ten tracks in new arrangements for voice, piano, trumpet, bass, percussion, and cuatro, compiled as a tribute to the Chilean songstress 50 years after her death.

1. Volver a los 17
2. Écoute moi petit
3. Gracias a la Vida
4. Maldigo del alto cielo
5. La jardinera
6. Run Run se fue pa’l norte
7. Según el favor del viento
8. Une Chilienne à Paris
9. Porque los pobres no tienen
10. Gracias a la Vida

This remarkable passionate and heartfelt new recording opens on the velvet gossamer wings of the delicate Volver a los 17 and the upbeat, playful and swinging Écoute moi petit and backs those up with the ornate piano musings found within Gracias a la Vida, the vibrancy of Maldigo del alto cielo and then a profoundly honest yearn is brought forth within La jardinera (The Gardener).

Up next is the profoundly steadfast tones and notes of Run Run se fue pa’l norte and the spirited Según el favor del viento and they are in turn followed by the late night, smokey club, lush, low vocalizations within Une Chilienne à Paris, the album rounding out on the impassioned embrace within Porque los pobres no tienen (Because The Poor Do Not Have), coming to a righteously flirtatious close on Gracias a la Vida.

Violeta Parra was born in 1917, in the region of Chillán, in the South of Chile, into a poor family of ten children. She composed her first songs at the age of twelve and soon after, started perfor¬ming in small venues with one of her sisters.

In 1952, after taking advice from her brother (the renowned “anti¬-poet” Nicanor Parra), she initiated a journey travelling around Chile with a tape recorder, capturing and compiling the nation’s traditional and folk songs. This was how she contributed to the creative process of the national Chilean identity, transcribing over 3000 songs in a book entitled Cantos Folklóricos Chilenos (Chilean Folk Music).

“Violeta Parra is a legend,” says Gonzalez Toro. “She roamed the country, looking for Chile’s forgotten folk songs, becoming the relentless ambassador of an unpretentious popular culture. Self-taught, she learned how to sing, to write, to play the harp and the guitar. Her raw voice imprinted the history of song writing in Latin America and beyond: without Violeta, there would be no Joan Baez, no Bob Dylan!”

“She invented and broadcasted what would then revolutionize po¬pular music in the 60s: folk. Violeta’s songs are of the utmost beauty: Volver a los 17, Según el favor del viento… and the international hymn that is Gracias a la Vida today. As the son of Chilean parents, I grew up with Violeta Parra’s songs; I know them like the back of my hand, as many other Latin Americans of my generation do.”

To commemorate 50 years since Parra’s tragic death by suicide, Gonzalez Toro invited pianist Thomas Enhco and others to pay a tribute to her life in songs. Enhco, who had never heard the works of Parra before working on this project, writes, “I discovered a fascinating poetic work, texts so deep and uniquely rich that overwhelmed me… I tried to align the music to the same intensity and richness as that of the lyrics without betraying their essence by using reharmonization, building on form and rhythm, while leaving moments to improvisation, as well as an orchestra¬tion that mixes jazz (piano, double bass, trumpet) with Latin American roots (percussions, cuatro, voice).”

Musicians:
EMILIANO GONZALEZ TORO - lead vocals & artistic direction
THOMAS ENHCO - piano, violin, vocals & arrangements
PALOMA PRADAL - vocals
MATHILDE ETIENNE - vocals
PANCHO GONZALEZ - vocals
DAVID ENHCO - trumpet, flugelhorn
JEREMY BRUYÈRE - upright bass
EDWIN SANZ - percussion
LEO RONDON - cuatro & arrangements
IRENE TORO - vocals, Spanish coach