2023-07-09 18:20:43
Journalist. culture manager. Creator of the festival “For once we got together”. Co-director of Juanita Primera Cultural Space. Part of the Secretary of Culture of the National University of the South. Awarded in a national literary contest for his originality, he got to know New York and a good part of its culture.
Raúl Soto spent almost his entire adolescence with friends on the street. But one day his life took an unexpected turn following advice from his uncle: “You have to study the clarinet.”
“They brought it to me and I didn’t know what it was. My uncle told me: `this is your instrument’. Now every time I see him, I thank him. He changed my life. My instrument is my happy place”, Raúl Soto told me during an interview in the winter of 2012.
The talk was at his house on Calle Moreno (altos), a week before performing the Concerto for clarinet and orchestra No. 2 in E flat major J118 op. 74, by Carl M. von Weber.
He was a dude. The number of WhatsApp messages I received this Sunday morning alerting me to such sad news speak of what Raulito was generating. He passed away while sleeping in the same bed that that time was upholstered with Weber’s scores. Because that’s how he was, a constant chaos that was ordered at the time of blowing the instrument. A beautiful metaphor for what music represented to him: a happy and conscious dream.
Those of us who know him know the incomparable talent he had, as part of the wind row of the Provincial Symphony Orchestra of Bahía Blanca, but to those who did not know him, we can assure you that he was an extraordinary musician and person. Not only because of his interpretations of the classical, but also because of his constant link with popular music.
Raúl Soto was one of those musicians who had no problem rubbing shoulders with bands of any genre, style, and color. From tropical music orchestral combos, neighborhood rock bands, chamber duos, trios…
“I respect popular music a lot. What’s more, it helps me a lot to play classical music. That is what shows you that music is one: the wave, the soul ”, he revealed to me in the living room of his house.
Raúl Soto with one of his students.
You might see him in a suit and tie in front of a packed Municipal Theater, or jogging and a hooded sweatshirt rehearsing to play the weekend in the Bahian underground. I risk naming some projects in which he starred, knowing that many will remain unnamed: Franco Barberón, Daniel López and his Jazz cycle, Luceros el Ojo Altónico, Andro, Amplificadx, Kaiser Carabela, Marco Tres, Nora Roca, Grupo Volpe Tango Contemporáneo and dozens more.
Raúl Soto is the first from the left, next to the Andro gang, in Juanita Primera.
Last night he was seen witnessing three bands at So Fresh, in San Juan and 12 de Octubre. Last weekend he had played with Andro as the opening act for Massacre at Colón 550. Today he no longer woke up.
“Music is one, there are twelve sounds. I don’t see the specialization in certain genres as bad. There are two things: popular and classical music, the one that has scores and the one that doesn’t. I believe that the sounds are in the air and you can read them in a score or from memory, but they are always the same sounds”, he clarified.
“Music is learned in solitude, in black and white. There is no choice but to sit behind a lectern. Otherwise you can’t. The ideal is to grab the book and give it. That’s the job. Did you see when they tell you that a rock band has a garage? That rehearsal in the garage every Sunday is what gives the group its sound. This is something similar, but personal.
Raúl Soto, at the last Shrimp and Prawn festival, blowing for Marco Tres.
Some time ago he had been declared an outstanding personality of the culture of the city of Bahía Blanca by the Deliberative Council.
The friendship that united Raúl Soto with Coco Catanese (Andro’s drummer).
Dear to all, Raúl left us with his example the teaching that music is to enjoy and share. That music saves. And that we are not going to take anything material from here.
Blow that I burn Raulito! Rest up brother.
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