Eugenio Toussaint

Eugenio Toussaint Uhthoff ( born October 9, 1954 in Mexico City; † February 8, 2011 ) was a Mexican jazz pianist, composer and arranger.

Life and work

Toussaint began his career in 1972 as a pianist in the band Odradek; In 1975, he played in the Jazz band Blue Note, with the was his first recording. In October 1976 he founded the Jazz Band Sacbé, which included his brothers Enrique (bass) and Fernando Toussaint (drums ) and saxophonist Alejandro Campos. In 1979 he went with the band to the United States and worked in Minneapolis with guitarist Will Sumner. In 1980 he was awarded by the Mexican government a scholarship to study in Los Angeles at the Dick Grove Music School, where he was inter alia lessons from Jon Crosse. With Crosse he played a few albums for Discovery Records a ( Street Corner, Aztlan and Dos mundos ).

In the early 1980s he worked in the U.S. with Paul Anka and Herb Alpert; Artist in Residence, he worked at the Berklee College of Music and in 2000 in Banff ( Alberta). In 1986, he returned to Mexico City, where he became primarily worked as a composer of ballet and chamber music, interpreted, inter alia, cellist Carlos Prieto.

From 1977 to 2002 he was responsible for the score of 10 films, short films and documentaries, including the quasi-complete renunciatory on language film Dollar Mambo (1993).

But Toussaint was also active in the field of jazz; 2001 and 2004 he was nominated for Grammy Awards in the Latin Music Albums for Gauguin (2001) and Musica de Cámara ( 2004). With Eddie Gomez and Gabriel Puentes he recorded the album Oinos in a trio setting. Eugenio Toussaint died in February 2011, possibly from an overdose of antidepressants.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Sacbé (1977 )
• Selva tucanera (1978 )
• Street Corner (1982 )
• Aztlán (1983 )
• Dos mundos (1986 )
• The Painters (1996 )
• Todo Sacbé (2001/2007)
• Tri neo ( 2007)