Gabe Baltazar

Who is Gabe Baltazar?

Gabe Baltazar Jr. is an Asian-American jazz alto saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. His mother, born Chiyoko Haraga on a Hawaii sugar plantation, was the daughter of Japanese immigrants who came to Hawaii to work on the plantations around 1900. His father, Gabriel Baltazar Sr., was born in Manila in 1906 and came to the United States to work as a musician in the mid-1920s.

Considered as one of the last great alumni from the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Baltazar moved to the U.S. mainland from Hawaii in the mid-1950s to attend Los Angeles City College and to record music with Paul Togawa in 1957. He spent a brief unrecorded period in 1960 with the Lighthouse All-Stars. He gained recognition for his years with Kenton, during which he led the saxophone section and recorded a number of well-regarded solos, most notably "Stairway to the Stars" on Kenton's Adventures in Jazz. Baltazar worked with Terry Gibbs in 1965, and recorded with Gil Fuller, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Onzy Matthews, and Oliver Nelson. Between 1965 and 1969 he worked extensively in Los Angeles recording studios, principally for NBC, where he played in orchestras for The Pat Boone Show, The Jerry Lewis Show, The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Smothers Brothers Show, and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. Baltazar returned to Hawaii in 1969 to become assistant director of the Royal Hawaiian Band, a position he held until 1985, when he retired from civil service. In the 1990s, Baltazar visited California often, to be bandleader and to record music for the Fresh Sound and V.S.O.P. labels.