Jacques Braunstein was an economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, publicist

Publicist

A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...

 and disc jockey

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

.

A native of Bucharest

Bucharest

Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

, Braunstein studied violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 at age six and later, at age thirteen, took up the acoustic bass

Acoustic bass

The term acoustic bass may refer to one of the following bass instruments:*Double bass - an upright contrabass violin*Acoustic bass guitar - the acoustic version of the bass guitar...

. Raised in a Jewish home, he moved to Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 with his family before settling in Caracas

Caracas

Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...

, Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 in the early 1950s, becoming a Venezuelan citizen in 1955. Fluent in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, he studied at the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

, where he earned two post-graduate degrees in economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 and chemical industry

Chemical industry

The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 different products.-Products:...

.

In his new home Braunstein, along with his father, founded the firm Braunstein Asociados, an advertising agency which lasted for more than five decades. Besides this, he was an avid jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 collector and a true connoisseur of the bridge whist

Bridge Whist

Bridge whist is a card game, a variation of whist popular 70 years ago. Later variations of the game led to auction bridge and contract bridge. It had the same or very similar rules to Russian whist of the time....

 game, but found time to teach marketing techniques at universities throughout Venezuela. Nevertheless, he was recognized as an international ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form.

Since arriving to Venezuela, Braunstein became an active participant in the local jazz community for most of his life, as founder of his radio show Idioma del Jazz in 1955 and the Caracas Jazz Club in 1956. On August 12th of this year, he promoted the first official jazz concert in Venezuela at Caracas National Theater inviting the clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

ist and saxophonist John LaPorta

John LaPorta

John LaPorta was a Philadelphia-born jazz clarinetist and saxophonist. LaPorta's sound has been compared to that of fellow jazz experimenter Jimmy Giuffre...

, who was backed by several jazz bands during his stay in Caracas, while a selection of the repertoire performed at the concert was released under the title South American Brothers by Fantasy Records

Fantasy Records

Fantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...

.

Since then, Braunstein gained quite a reputation over the years for coming up by organizing concerts with notables jazz groups led by Nat Adderley

Nat Adderley

Nathaniel Adderley was an American jazz cornet and trumpet player who played in the hard bop and soul jazz genres. He was the brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley....

, Monty Alexander

Monty Alexander

Monty Alexander is a jazz pianist and melodica player. His playing has a strong Caribbean influence and swinging feeling, but he has also been influenced by Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, and Ahmad Jamal.-Biography:Alexander discovered the piano at the age of 4, taking classical music...

, Jeff Berlin

Jeff Berlin

Jeff Berlin is an American jazz, jazz fusion and progressive rock electric bass player.Jeff Berlin's bass playing is somewhat similar to that of Jaco Pastorius, though Berlin plays a fretted bass and has stated his distaste for Jaco imitators.-Early life:Jeff Berlin was born to parents who were...

, Eddie Bert

Eddie Bert

Eddie Bert is an American bebop jazz trombonist.His first job as a musician came in 1940 when he joined the Sam Donahue Orchestra, and then joined up with Red Norvo in 1941, later performing also with the bands of Stan Kenton and with Benny Goodman's bebop orchestra.He also recorded extensively as...

, Randy Brecker

Randy Brecker

Randal "Randy" Brecker is an American trumpeter and flugelhornist. He is a highly sought after performer in the genres of jazz, rock, and R&B, and has performed or recorded with Stanley Turrentine, Billy Cobham, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Sandip Burman, Charles Mingus, Blood, Sweat & Tears,...

, Gary Burton

Gary Burton

Gary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist.A true original on the vibraphone, Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the usual two-mallets. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated...

, Charlie Byrd

Charlie Byrd

Charlie Lee Byrd was a famous and versatile American guitarist born in Suffolk, Virginia. His earliest and strongest musical influence was Django Reinhardt, the famous gypsy guitarist. Byrd became the American guitarist who best understood and played Brazilian music, especially the Bossa Nova genre...

, Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, Paco de Lucía

Paco de Lucía

Paco de Lucía, born Francisco Sánchez Gómez , is a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist and composer. He is considered by many to be one of the finest guitarists in the world and the greatest guitarist of the flamenco genre...

, Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera is a Cuban alto saxophonist, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. The winner of multiple Grammys and other awards, D'Rivera has lived in the United States since the early 1980s. He has worked in a variety of contexts, but is perhaps best known for playing Latin...

, Bill Evans

Bill Evans

William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

, Maynard Ferguson

Maynard Ferguson

Maynard Ferguson was a Canadian jazz musician and bandleader. He came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Woody Herman

Woody Herman

Woodrow Charles Herman , known as Woody Herman, was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called "The Herd," Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and '40s bandleaders...

, Barney Kessel

Barney Kessel

Barney Kessel was an American jazz guitarist born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. Generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century, he was noted in particular for his vast knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies...

, Tito Puente

Tito Puente

Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...

, Miroslav Vitouš

Miroslav Vitouš

Miroslav Ladislav Vitouš , is a Czech jazz bassist.-Biography:Born in Prague, he began the violin at age six, and started playing the piano at age ten, and bass at fourteen. As a young man in Europe, Vitouš was a competitive swimmer. One of his early music groups was the Junior Trio with his...

 and Paul Winter

Paul Winter

Paul Winter is an American saxophonist , and is a six-time Grammy Award nominee.- Biography :Paul Winter attended Altoona Area High School and graduated in 1957...

, among others.

For many years, Braunstein also worked as a foreign correspondent for magazines as Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

, Down Beat

Down Beat

Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...

and Paris Match

Paris Match

Paris Match is a French weekly magazine. It covers major national and international news along with celebrity lifestyle features. It was founded in 1949 by the industrialist Jean Prouvost....

. He also was honored by the U. S. Embassy in Venezuela on the 50th anniversary of his weekly jazz radio show, in virtue of his public profile, his love of jazz, and his becoming an ambassador of good will for the radio listeners during more than 2500 continuous editions from 1955 through 2005.

As Braunstein said in his own words, Paz y Jazz, he devoted a significant part of his life to studying comparative jazz styles and techniques, motivating his audiences at Idioma del Jazz, which lasted 54 years, until a few days before his death in Caracas, at the age of 78, after suffering a heart failure.

Sources

• Enciclopedia de la Música en Venezuela – Directores José Peñín y Walter Guido, Tomo 1, pag. 220. Publisher: Fundación Bigott, Caracas, 1998. Language: Spanish. ISBN 9805428021
• En idioma de jazz: memorias provisorias de Jacques Braunstein – Jacqueline Goldberg. Publisher: Fundación para la Cultura Urbana, Caracas, 2004. Language: Spanish. ISBN 9806553152
• My Sax Life: A Memoir – Paquito D'Rivera, Ilan Stavans, pag. 125. Publisher: Northwestern University Press, United States, 2005. Language: English. ISBN 0810122189
• The guitar in Venezuela: a concise history to the end of the 20th century – Alejandro Bruzual, Anna Moorby, pag. 135. Publisher: Doberman-Yppan, 2005. Language: English. ISBN 2895033005

External links

• Fantasy Records checklist, compiled by Jim Harrod & François Ziegler, March 2004
• Google books – Billboard, June 15, 1968, page 56
• Steve Khan
  Steve Khan
  Steve Khan is an American jazz guitarist.Born in Los Angeles, California, Khan is known for his work with artists such as Steely Dan, Billy Joel, Michael Franks, Hubert Laws, Billy Cobham, Jack DeJohnette, James Brown, Maynard Ferguson, and Weather Report...
  
   (In Memoriam)
• Andy Martin
  Andy Martin (American musician)
  Andy Martin is an American virtuoso jazz trombonist. Among other acts, he is a member of Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band and the Bill Holman big band. He has played in over 100 movies, including the trombone solo in the opening credits of Monsters Inc. He has played with T.V. shows such as Family...
  
   and Vic Lewis
  Vic Lewis
  Vic Lewis was a British jazz guitarist and bandleader.Lewis began playing the guitar at the age of three, and dabbled with cornet and trombone. One of his early bands included George Shearing, then a teenager, among its members...
  
   (Paz y Jazz tribute)