eJazzNews Archive

Eugenio Toussaint Jazz Trio: Free Shows at Harbourfront, Toronto, November 3 and 4, 2007

Originally published on eJazzNews · · Club Listings / Gigs

On October 30, 2007, eJazzNews ran a listing for two free concerts by the Eugenio Toussaint Jazz Trio at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on November 3 and 4, 2007, part of the centre’s Day of the Dead program. Toussaint, a pianist and composer from Mexico City who co-founded the jazz group Sacbé and later wrote concert music for orchestras and chamber ensembles, died on February 8, 2011, at 56.

What the 2007 listing said

The notice gave the times as 3:30 p.m. both days in Harbourfront’s Brigantine Room and summed up three decades of work: Sacbé in the 1970s, Roberto Aymes’s band Blue Note, a stint as Paul Anka’s musical director in the 1980s, a turn to classical composition in the 1990s, award nominations for his albums Gauguin and Música de cámara, and residencies at Berklee College of Music and in Banff, Alberta.

Several details need correcting. The listing said Gauguin received a Grammy nomination for “Best Latin Classical” recording; both albums were in fact nominated at the Latin Grammy Awards, in the Best Classical Album category, in 2001 and 2004. Banff was a seven-week residency at the Banff Centre in 2000, while the Berklee connection was an invited visit that October for lectures and a concert, at which the Berklee jazz orchestra played his piece Hijo de la ciudad. The headline also misspelled his name as “Touissant.”

From Sacbé to the concert hall

Toussaint was born in Mexico City on October 9, 1954, and was largely self-taught. He started out professionally in 1972 with the group Odradek and in 1975 joined Blue Note, the band led by bassist Roberto Aymes, with which he made his first recordings of original music. Late in 1976 he founded Sacbé with his brothers Enrique (bass) and Fernando (drums) and saxophonist Alejandro Campos. According to the group history on Toussaint’s website, their first album, Sacbé (1977), launched the group’s own label, Discos Arte, at a time when independent record companies were rare in Mexico.

In 1979 he moved to the United States, studied at the Dick Grove Music Workshops in Los Angeles on a Mexican government grant, and formed a new version of Sacbé with saxophonist Jon Crosse. From 1982 to 1983 he worked with trumpeter Herb Alpert and as musical director for Paul Anka. He returned to Mexico in 1986 to concentrate on composing. His works were played by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, the UNAM Philharmonic, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano and the Camerata de las Américas. The album Gauguin (Urtext, 2000) collected a guitar concerto, the title concerto for harp and English horn, and Bouillabaisse for piano and orchestra, which he dedicated to Miles Davis on the fifth anniversary of the trumpeter’s death.

What happened next

Toussaint kept a jazz trio alongside his composing. Trío (M&L Music, 2004) featured bassist Agustín Bernal and drummer Gabriel Puentes, and Oinos: Música para beber vino (Urtext, 2008) paired Puentes with bassist Eddie Gómez. His official chronology records a premiere of his Clarinet Concerto by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in September 2010. He died on February 8, 2011. A live trio album, En vivo en el Polak Forum, with bassist Aarón Cruz and Puentes, came out on Polak Forum Records the same year.

Where to start listening

  • Todo Sacbé (Global Entertainment, 2001): a four-CD collection of all existing Sacbé recordings, reissued in remastered form by Jazz Urtext in 2007.
  • Gauguin (Urtext, 2000): the concertos that earned his first Latin Grammy nomination.
  • Oinos: Música para beber vino (Urtext, 2008): his trio with Eddie Gómez and Gabriel Puentes.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
Browse the eJazzNews archive