Fortunately for us, today's video of Libertango performed by Daisy Jopling and her band at a live concert in Sonora, Mexico in December 2010 represented the best of the night. Libertango was penned as an unabashedly commercial pop tune aimed at radio play and record sales. It lends itself well to interpretation in any genre and Ms. Jopling's jazz version is valid, creative and well performed. I enjoyed it. Perhaps I should just remain pleased with the Piazzolla and ignore the rest of the concert but public duty calls and I shall comment further.
Ms. Jopling was a prodigy on the violin, appearing as a soloist at the Royal Albert Hall at the age of 14. She began to stray from the straight classical path with the group Triology but appears now to have lost the path with her new, rock/classic band. Other members of the band are Daru Jones on drums, Ben Zwerin on bass, and Pierre Miller on keyboard. The full evening's performance of the band is well documented in ten videos which can be seen on Ms. Jopling's YouTube Channel. In addition to Piazzolla, you will find Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Prokofiev, and Albeniz at the concert all in "rock" format. Ms. Jopling, dressed in black bra, black negligee and gold lamé pajama bottoms, prances and poses through the concert like a Bond girl and her fiddling does indeed resemble that group. The boys in the band appear bored and ignored although Daru does a superb job of injecting a little edge into the classics. Others have done the rock/classic thing - some better, many worse; but, my overall impression is over-the-top and over-the-shark.
Note to Ms. Jopling: It was a fun experiment. Now, please come home.
If the video does not appear below, click here.
To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.
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