“It was the 1970’s, I was seven and my sister was five and we had to flee from Chile; we lived in Santiago. My granny used to play the Tango on the piano when my Dad was very young, Tango was very modern then and that’s what everyone was doing. She would play the piano and sing. My father had four brothers, they were all very musical and went to music school quite a long way from home.
They formed a band that played Latin music called Los Cubanitos when they were all still children, it was the 1950’s. My father was the youngest, he was on piano. They got on the radio and performed quite a lot, they’d dress up in frilly clothing. When we fled Chile in 1974 we arrived in Denmark with just a suitcase and no piano. Whenever we were near a piano my father would play it, no matter where he was, he was obviously missing it.
Once he got a job he wanted a piano but couldn’t afford it, so he got one of those new organs with two keyboards, a cheap brown thing. My Dad was listening to Jimmy Smith, he was playing that style at the time. I started playing as well but went over to the guitar after a while. Years later my father moved back to Chile and ended up inheriting my granny’s piano. When I visit him I wake up to the sound of him playing and then, last thing at night as well he’s on the piano, he’s always the last to go to bed.
He spends most of his day playing, he’s an amateur who really loves it, mainly jazz and also bossa, he plays a lot of Bill Evans. He’s got a good ear, he’s pretty good. Music has always been very important in his life, when we first arrived in Denmark one of the first things he did was take us all to the big jazz club in Copenhagen. It was the Jazzhus Montmartre and we saw Tania Maria. They weren’t used to letting children in and didn’t know how much to charge.” (Maria Larrain)
Connect with Maria at http://www.butterfieldosteopathy.co.uk/