Weekend Extra: Mulliganidad

There is a baritone saxophonist in Spain who sounds amazingly like Gerry Mulligan. Rifftides reader Tyler Newcomb sent the alert:

Man, that Joan Chamorro plays so much like Gerry, if you closed your eyes you'd swear it was him. Plays just behind the beat like Mulligan, improvises the same type of lines and ideas, and his sound is drop-dead the same. All he needs is some red hair to go on tour with a Chet Baker clone and recreate the original Quartet.

This is a link to Chamorro's quartet playing, "Bernie's Tune," "Love Me Or Leave Me" and, somewhat less successfuly, "Makin' Whoopee." All of the pieces were staples of the early Mulligan quartet repertoire. The tape runs out before "Love Me Or Leave Me" finishes. The other players are Toni Belenguer, trombone; David Mengual, bass; and David Xirgu, drums. Chamorro's channeling of Mulligan is uncanny, but for originality of ideas, pay close attention to Belenguer. Things are happening in Barcelona. The video opens with less than a minute of Ben Webster's tune "Go Home."

Searching the web for more about Chamorro, I came across this short video clip of him playing the bass saxophone not on a stand, as most bass saxophonists do, but holding the monster--a feat in itself. Maybe confining his playing to the baritone range makes the horn seem lighter.