Once upon a time there was a little boy who called himself “gato”.  He was born on a Sunday and was everything that lore promises for one born on the Sabbath i.e. bonny and blithe and good and gay.  Once he grew up a little, he decided to change his identity to “Monkee”, but later on, not content with that persona either, he realized that his real self was the best of all people, and he was right, so Lalo came to stay.

       
Of Irish-Italian and Mexican descent, it’s scarcely a surprise that he was, of course, at once a mystic, a dreamer, a poet and, all in all, the proverbial traveling writer and player of music: a minstrel, and travel he did.  He went on astonishingly fortuitous journeys because the opportunity to go places just seemed to fall into his lap without any particular premeditation on his part. He played his violin in the Paris metro and in nightclubs in New York and Mexico. He studied composition in Paris, New York, Mexico City, Saint Ambrose in Davenport, Iowa and Agustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and made various other side-trips within Europe, the U.S., and Mexico.  He also played with a chamber music group in Cuernavaca while at the same time running from one gig to another every night in order to make ends meet.  He worked very hard at his chosen profession also forming several groups and touring solo until finally dedicating himself to writing and producing beautiful music for Mexico, Latin America and Europe.    




     To say he was loved would be a gross understatement.  To say he is missed falls very short of the reality of the void his absence has created, feeling that he still had so much to give, to do.  He loved life, every aspect of it.  He was perpetually in love with some lovely young woman and readily admitted that he was in awe of the opposite sex.  He loved food, drink, to laugh, to read, to learn new things, and believed fervently in his God.

            His difficult relationship with his father became the basis of a never ending search for approval and acceptance, resulting in a wealth of sweetness and sensitivity of character from which he drew much of his talent and genius.

            He told me that he knew what Joseph Campbell had meant about following your bliss because he felt that bliss when he performed for an audience... He had planned to dedicate himself to playing for those audiences since his doctors surprisingly told him that he was now cancer free, but it wasn’t to be.

             He endured his illness with dignity and acceptance of God’s will, and said that he was so happy that at least he had had the chance to present his music at the Conservatory and the Pinacoteca Virrenal in Mexico, and to have been commissioned for the world premiere of his music at the Agustana presentation of “Music of the 20th century” on October 27, 1998; the eve of his 42nd birthday, an indescribable gift!!!¡  I could go on and on extolling his capacity to understand how to enjoy life, but suffice it to say that he was my beloved son whom I shall miss for the rest of my life…

Patricia Bari Frew