Today's featured video of Zum (not Divertimento 9 as the video title suggests) as performed by Piazzolla's Conjunto 9 is one of the few existing videos of that famous group. The video is a clip from a 1972 movie titled Argentinisima by directors Fernando Ayala and Héctor Olivera. The movie featured a variety of musicians, mostly folk musicians, from various parts of Argentina. Piazzolla was the only musician to represent Buenos Aires in the movie. The first 1'45" have appeared several times on YouTube and the last 3'45" which feature the dancing of Nelida Lobato have also appeared but I believe this is the first time the two sections have appeared as a single unit and the quality of this video is much better than those available previously.
The Conjunto 9, sometimes referred to as the Nonet, was formed by Piazzolla in 1971 by the addition of a second violinist (Hugo Baralis), a viola (Néstor Panik), a cello (José Bragato) and a percussionist (José Corriale) to the existing Quintet. Performances by the Conjunto 9 are captured well in two reissue CD's: Musica Popular Contemporanea, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. You will find Zum on Volume 1 of this series. The Conjunto 9 was disbanded in less than two years but some of Piazzolla's most interesting music was composed for this group.
Unfortunately, nearly 30 seconds of the video are missing at the end. If you want to see the Lobato dance sequence to the very end, you can view it here.
If the video does not appear below, click here.
To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.
Hi, I'm from Brazil. Here English teaching is pretty bad, so sorry about anything I can write wrong. I met your blog about six months ago and I really appreciated it. About this post, I think there's a mistake, because the piece in the video is not "Divertimento 9", but "Zum", also from the album "Musica Popular Contemporanea" Volume 1. Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reerrtJ6DOQ&feature=PlayList&p=679ACBACEA72B090&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=54 there's a video from 1972 where Piazzolla plays, with the Noneto, "Divertimento 9". Thank you so much, and congratulations for the blog!
ReplyDeleteGerson is correct - the music is indeed Zum not Divertimento 9 as I originally wrote. I have edited the blog to correct the error.
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing the error to my attention.