Barcelona musician Jordi Sabatés died this Tuesday, at the age of 73. Pianist, composer and musical arranger, he was part of the group Om in the sixties, led by guitarist Toti Soler, and also participated in the recording of Pau Riba’s famous album ‘Dioptria’. With his group Jarka released several albums, and simultaneously this facet with multiple collaborations, some of us as much as a four-handed album with Tete Montoliu, or another with Santi Arisa. Sabatés lavished himself on both the world of song and jazz, with forays into chamber music, creating music for film and making folk tales for piano and orchestra, among others.
Jordi Sabatés was a pianist and composer, as well as a musical arranger for film, theater and television. As an author, he has a discography of more than twenty titles that combined personal work with collaborations with duet and band in different musical fields.
He trained as a musician at the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu and began his professional career in 1971, although he had previously been part of the group Om, with Toti Soler. His fifty-year career makes him one of the most versatile musicians on the Catalan and national music scene.
Author’s song, jazz, rock, lied, chamber music, symphony and also compositions for film, theater, children’s stories, few genres resisted his musical ambition.
In 1974 he released ‘Vampyria’, with Tete Montoliu, which happens to be one of the best records in the history of Catalan jazz. Three years earlier he had made his debut with the group Jarka with another memorable album, ‘Orthodoxy’. Then came new collaborations with Toti Soler on several albums and, in 1979, the duet with Santi Arisa which was rated 5 stars as a masterpiece by the jazz specialist magazine ‘Down Beat’. In 1983 came ‘The Ragtime Dance’ (reissued in 2008 by Picap), a solo album that won the National Award for Phonographic Companies, nationwide.
Sabatés continued to make music and release albums until a few years ago. As for cinema, he dedicated records to the figure of Nosferatu from Murnau’s film (‘Nosferatu, towards the vampire’, 1992), dedicated a show to Buster Keaton (‘Keatoniana. A dream of Buster Keaton’ , 1997) and put music to the cinema of Segundo de Chomón (‘Le piano magique’, 2011).
In 2008 he was a finalist for the Music Awards with ‘A propósito de Bola de Nieve’, and in 2016 would come his latest work, ‘Maverick’, a solo album that illustrates the range of musical genres that go to cultivate the Barcelona pianist.
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