They Shot The Piano Player
Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, SelfMadeHero, £29.99 

ON MARCH 18 1976 one of Brazil’s most innovative musicians of the time, Francisco Tenorio Cerqueira, aka Tenorio Jr, played a concert with Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho at the Gran Rex in Buenos Aires. He returned to his hotel and his companion, and shortly after 3am the 34-year-old left to buy a sandwich. He was never heard of or seen again.

Argentina was a dangerous place at the time, convulsed by extrajudicial kidnapping and murder instigated against all manner of social activists by a ruthless military junta.

By borrowing from the title of Francois Truffaut’s 1960 film Shoot The Piano Player (The Truffaut films Jules and Jim and The 400 Blows were very popular in Brazil) the authors set the tone for a noir-ish investigation.

The story has the New York music journalist Jeff Harris, intrigued by the disappearance, travel to Brazil in 2009 and embark on an investigation of Tenorio’s vanishing by meeting and speaking to former fellow musicians, acquaintances and relatives.

Among the many he meets the legends Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gill and Chico Buarque all of whom reminisce about Tenorio’s influence on them personally and their music. A picture emerges of a volatile perfectionist, a generous genius consumed by music and an obsessive search for standards that only he knew or could intuit.

Tenorio left only one album, Embalo, recorded in 1964 but it remains a milestone: The tracks Embalo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYwz4R-tl4, Sambinha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXSWUF17j2U, Nuvens/Clouds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q37UnwZEDKQ and even a simple piano solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ldgm35siG8 mesmerise.

Harris’s process of detection is spectacularly drawn, particularly the night-scapes, and related with candour — it is a page-turner as the narrator closes in on the truth about the fatal night. 

One quibble is the authors’ eulogisation of the “yankee comandante” William Morgan who turned, with others, against Fidel Castro when a socialist path was announced. Morgan was arrested while preparing an armed insurrection in Cuba, tried and shot by firing squad.

In a final bitter and tragic twist in Tenorio’s story it appears, according to a member of an Argentinian military “snatch” squad present on the fatal night, that Tenorio was spotted and picked up by them arbitrarily in a “corner shop,” while they “cruised” in the neighbourhood, simply because he looked like a “leftie.”

Taken to the notorious Naval School of Mechanics (ESMA) his fate was sealed when the Brazilian embassy washed its hands of him fearing bad publicity once Tenorio, free, met the press and told his story. He was then shot dead by the infamous intelligence officer Alfredo Astiz. Astiz himself was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in October 2011 in Argentina.

Ironically, the day after the concert at the Gran Rex, an accolade appeared in the press under the headline “Vinicius in Buenos Aires, Pianist Tenorio Jr surprises the public.” It exalts his playing: “The show revealed a surprise for many: Tenorio Junior’s brilliant performance. The pianist executed an inspired composition that displayed the most authentic expression of modern Brazilian music.” 

Tenorio Jr however, who sought excellence but never acclaim, most likely would have remained oblivious to such plaudits.