Wikipedia:Claudio Parra

Claudio Parra Pizarro (Viña del Mar, September 14, 1945) is a Chilean musician, pianist and composer. He has served as a pianist and keyboardist for the band Los Jaivas its formation in 1963. He is an undisputed reference of the piano with a properly Chilean sound, and considered one of the most important in the history of popular music in Chile.

Biography


Claudio is part of the Parra family of Viña del Mar, which should not be confused with the Parra clan, from where Violeta Parra, Nicanor Parra and Roberto Parra, among others, emerged. It is through this family's friendship with Mario Mutis and Gato Alquinta that the Los Jaivas group was born.

The formal approach to music occurs under the influence of two family members: his uncle Ramón Parra Román ("Uncle Moncho"), who had been a talented classical piano soloist, and his aunt Gladys, who took him along with his brother. Eduardo, to concerts by the Chilean Symphony Orchestra and to presentations, among others, of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. Between the ages of eight and twelve, and thanks to these influences, Claudio began to cultivate classical music techniques in his piano playing and to apply them to collective musical creation.

When The High & Bass was formed, Claudio's job was to play the accordion. Convinced by a professor at the Federico Santa María Technical University while studying engineering in 1965, Claudio decides to drop out, travel to Santiago and apply to the Conservatory of the University of Chile. Learning intensively, since his nineteen years are not the optimal age for piano studies, Claudio manages to enter the Conservatory and becomes the only member of the group to have formal musical training. He moved from the accordion to the piano, an instrument that would characterize his work in the group's most glorious years, and that would define an important part of his characteristic sound.

His knowledge of learned music has also led him to be the constant link between the band and the orchestras with which they have worked in their symphonic incursions, such as the still unpublished "Litanies Por El Azar", "Los Caminos Que Se Abren", "Corre Que Te Pillo" and the album Mamalluca (1999). The composition of melodies is his strength, and his characteristic piano is the one that guides songs as important as "La Conquistada", "La Poderosa Muerte" and "Mira Niñita", although it is seen more noticeable in progressive works such as those that adorn the album. Works by Violeta Parra from 1984 and even in her beautiful composition "Elqui", which appears in Mamalluca. But he has also executed interesting arrangements on synthesizers, such as those that adorn the song "Amor Americano" by Alturas de Machu Picchu, from 1981 and the complete album Si Tú No eres from 1989.

Within the band, he is the inveterate collector, the one in charge of keeping the updated archive of the concerts and recordings of Los Jaivas, as well as the memories and the scores. Due to his sociable nature, he is the member of the group that has given the most interviews to the press, and in recent years he has become the person in charge of presenting the songs at concerts. After the death of Gato Alquinta, his character as the band's "musical director" led him to be the one who prepared his children, Eloy and Ankatu, to be his replacement.

In 2007 he received a tribute from the engineer Carolina Hernández in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago de Chile

He is the only one to have been in Los Jaivas from the beginning of the band.