El Gato, Argentina-born saxophonist Leandro Gato (‘the cat’) Barbieri, has died of pneumonia in hospital in New York. He was 83. 

He will be remembered for his huge spiritual tone, and for his wildly expressive tango-influenced and Coltrane-inspired work on such albums as the sensuous soundtrack for the film Last Tango in Paris and albums on the Flying Dutchman and Impulse labels. While his heyday was the 1970s he continued to perform regularly until relatively recently.

There’s an obituary in The New York Times