In June 1972, Cristián Cuturrufo was born in Coquimbo, into a family of musicians, since his father, the accordionist Wilson Cuturrufo, was already prominent in the songbook of the pirate port.
However, his love for music only came during his teenage years. In an interview with The Clinic, he acknowledged that, in fact, it happened circumstantially.
“After I was repeating first half, my dad one day told me: learn this solo of the song ‘La Bamba’ on trumpet and only then will I give you permission for a party. I listened to him and learned it. When I was leaving for the party, my dad stopped me cinematically and said: ‘Remember me, one day your light bulb is going to go off and you won’t know what’s going to happen.’ Just as it happened. And I started studying trumpet, trumpet, trumpet. And listen to Chick Corea, George Gershwin, Cole Porter. And I became autistic. I never went to parties again. From the baddest trumpet player at school I became the coolest. “I won all the positions in the orchestras,” he said with enthusiasm.
From then on he knew that music was his thing and entered the Music School of the Catholic University, where he had academic and technical training as a learned trumpeter. In fact, between 1991 and 1993 he was a member of the Gabrieli Ensemble.
In musicapopular.cl., they define him as one of the figures who led jazz in the ’90s. “The trumpeter Cristián Cuturrufo put his stamp on the scene of that time by applying a very solid revisionism of bebop music with his skills as a soloist and improviser. Cuturrufo assimilated this language from New York to give his music a very Chilean character, a fact that finally brought him to a reference category and brought him great popularity. With his musical proposals, ranging from pure jazz to Latin jazz and from national swing to Latin funk, in addition to his management in launching music festivals and nightclubs, Cuturrufo was a milestone in the chronology of Chilean jazz. ” notes the website.
In the beginning he met the alto saxophonist Ignacio González, with whom he began to play and had his first appearances in jam sessions at the Jazz Club and spontaneous groups with musicians such as Alejandra Santa Cruz, David Castañeda and Ignacio González himself. He was greatly influenced by the bebop of figures such as Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro.
In 1990 he joined the Latin jazz group Motuto, a septet with which he played in dance and Afro-Cuban music spaces until 1992. Then he traveled to Cuba to deepen his studies of popular music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz.
He also worked with Ángel Parra Trío and directed successive quintets in which many of the jazz players of the ’90s performed: the saxophonists Ignacio González, Jimmy Coll and David Pérez, the guitarists Jorge Díaz, Dani Lencina and Federico Dannemann, the bassists Felipe Chacón , Christian Gálvez and Cristián Monreal, and the drummers Iván Lorenzo, Carlos Cortés and Andrés Celis, among others. Additionally, he worked alongside the legendary old guard pianist Valentín Trujillo. His first album, Puro jazz (2000), is the result of all the adventures that took place in the ’90s, the decade of transition, also for Chilean jazz.
Despite this, he always recognized that he was more motivated by popular rhythms, without formalisms, and he defined himself as a “restless and voracious” creator, without many established scripts. “I am not a jazz player, but a musician who plays jazz. I am a number one fan of good cumbia. I love the Viking’ 5, I am their number one fan. First the Viking’ 5, then Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock,” he highlighted in the interview with The Clinic.
During his career he had the opportunity to make various international presentations, in New York, Egypt, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, among others.
But he not only stood out for his musical quality, but also for his work as a cultural manager. Among other things, he produced the Las Condes Jazz Festival, which at the time drew 3,000 spectators to the Alberto Hurtado Park. But what he is most remembered for are his venues: The Jazz Corner (2013) and Boliche Jazz (2017), unavoidable coordinates of the national circuit due to the few jazz clubs that existed in Santiago at that time.
The Coquimbano artist died at the age of 48, on March 19, 2021, due to Covid-19. However, his musical legacy and heritage are still present in the national artistic scene, where he will continue to be recognized as the greatest exponent of jazz in our country.
