Thursday, August 26, 2010

Adios Nonino - Jorge Dalto

Jimmy Hendrix. Clifford Brown. Janice Joplin. Buddy Holly. Robert Johnson. Jim Morrison. And, Jorge Dalto. All great musicians who prematurely departed from life. Some by their own demons, some by accident and some by illness. You may not know the name - Jorge Dalto - but you should. Born in Argentina in 1948, he moved to the United States in 1969, and died in 1987 in New York City of cancer. He was one of the best Latin jazz pianists - ever. He played with most of the greats and won a Grammy in 1976 for his version of This Masquerade recorded with guitarist, George Benson. There is no better way to learn about Dalto than to read the March 15, 2010 Música para Gatos blog devoted to Dalto's life and music.

The only thing that could be added to that blog, is today's video - which is actually just an audio track covering Adios Nonino from Dalto's 1983 album, Solo Piano (reissued in 1990, but good luck in finding a copy). I think you will find it a very personal and unique interpretation of Piazzolla's classic.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Libertango - Camerata Romeu

Camerta Romeu, founded and led by Zenaida Romeu, is perhaps the best known Cuban classical music organization in the United States. Their version of Libertango is featured in today's video. The Camerata are known through their recordings and through Cecilia Domeyko's award winning documentary, Cuba Mia, which many in the U.S. have seen on the PBS television network or on DVD.

The Camerata Romeu is famous not only for the high quality of their musical performances but also for being an all-woman orchestra and for performing without scores - all works are performed from memory - and their interpretations tend to be more open and emotional as a result. Such a commitment to musical performance is rarely seen in such a large chamber group. The Camerata is also generous in their coverage of Latin composers, both old and new. Their version of Libertango was arranged by one such young Cuban composer, Yadira Cobo, once a violinist herself in the Camerata. The introduction to Libertango, which takes the first three minutes of the video provides a good example of Cobo's skills. It is well crafted music but I would have enjoyed a few more "hooks" to link it to Piazzolla's themes in Libertango.

Videos from Cuba of performances of Piazzolla's work are quite rare. This is only the second one I have found in nearly two years of monitoring virtually all Piazzolla videos on YouTube. The video, unfortunately, has mechanical flaws which make viewing not a completely satisfying experience but the Camerata Romeu deserves your attention.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Sunday, August 22, 2010

Histoire du Tango - Concerto Grosso Format

Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango - four pieces depicting the evolution of tango from 1900 to the present day - are consistently among his ten most frequently performed compositions. They were originally composed for flute and guitar but have been performed on an endless variety of duos, occasionally expanded to trio or quartet and once, for a very notable performance, arranged as a piano concerto for Mario Parmisano and the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin (one of my all-time favorite performances). Today's video adds another combination, a concerto grosso format, and I think it is a very important contribution to the catalog of orchestral arrangements of Piazzolla's ensemble works.

The arrangements are by Vadim Venediktov. Perhaps that is Mr. Venediktov on the podium, perhaps leading the Volgograd Symphony - there is insufficient information with the video to know. I suggested that the arrangement was in the form of a concerto grosso - the term is normally applied only to those baroque pieces composed for a small set of instruments and an orchestra - but it seems appropriate particularly given the structure that Mr. Venediktov has chosen. He has retained most of the guitar/flute composition as Piazzolla composed it and brings in the orchestra to add body to the work. In much of the work, the orchestra is silent and the flute/guitar duo carries the piece, just as in a baroque concerto grosso. While I have embedded only the first of the four Histoire series, Bordel 1900, the pattern is the same in all of them. These arrangements are quite novel in the world of Piazzolla's music. I am not sure how such arrangements find their way from Volgograd to the rest of the world but those music mavens that are looking for new symphonic worlds to conquer should immediately contact Mr. Venediktov (some of these may work - email: muz2010@yandex.ru; phone: (8442) 38 3191; fax: (8442)38 30 78; snail mail: Municipal Music Theater, Chuykova Str. 4, 400131 Volgograd, Russia).

The orchestrations are imaginative and add a new and welcome level of dynamism to the Histoire. I have only one point of criticism which I strongly encourage Mr. Venediktov to address. In all four pieces he uses a pair of small tuned drums struck with mallets. Those should be removed from the score. The sound is distracting and the use of such percussion is totally inappropriate with Piazzolla's music and totally inappropriate to the tango in any period of the tango's history. I enjoy such drums in salsa music but this is not salsa music. The rest of the percussion - vibes, marimbas, tympani and drum kit - is appropriate and well done. There are places in the music where "thumps" are needed. They should be done by tapping on the guitar just as hundreds of guitar/flute duos have done ever since the pieces were composed.

I should not close this review without saluting the two soloists - Sergei Matokhin on guitar and Janna Froman on flute. Without their superb performance, even these nicely done arrangements would fail.

Links to all four videos are provided below although only Bordel 1900 is embedded in this blog. Two cautions on the videos: the sound and video are unfortunately not quite synchronized and second, instead of editing the videos, the sound has simply been shut off after the piece. You won't miss anything if you shut the video down at the end of the piece.

Click here for Bordel 1900
Click here for Café 1930 (this one is perhaps the best)
Click here for Nightclub 1960
Click here for Concert d'aujourd'hui



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Saturday, August 21, 2010

Conducting Tangazo - Andrea Profili

This blog is devoted to videos of performance of music composed by Astor Piazzolla. Any musician will tell you that behind the few minutes of performance that we enjoy viewing here, there are hours of practice and rehearsal that we don't see. Today's video gives us a glimpse of the normally unseen rehearsal process.

We see Andrea Laura Profili rehearsing Piazzolla's Tangazo with the Symphony Orchestra of Converse College which is usually led by Professor Siegwart Reichwald. Ms. Profili was at one time, perhaps still is, a violin performance major at Converse College. I am only guessing but perhaps she is from Argentina and was asked to help add a little canyengue to the orchestra's performance. She does an astonishingly good job of communicating to the orchestra what she wants to hear - for example, view her message on the tango accent at minute three in the video. I do not know if Ms. Profili has a serious interest in conducting but she has her own style and tremendous musical communication skills - she would be a success as a conductor.

While you do not hear much of Tangazo in the video, it is an interesting piece. It was composed in 1968 or 1969 as a serious orchestral work showing that Piazzolla's ambitions as a classical composer never really left him. It was premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by the Ensemble Musical de Buenos Aires. You will find some interesting comments from Piazzolla about that performance here (he was not happy). There is a version of Tangazo on YouTube to which you can listen although for serious listeners, I recommend the Gabriel Castagna conducted version available on the CD, Piazzolla: Symphonic Works.

If you enjoy this inside view of orchestral rehearsal, you may enjoy this rehearsal video with Ricardo Muti and this one with Herbert von Karajan. Can you imagine either of these gentlemen demonstrating the tango accent?

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Friday, August 20, 2010

Buenos Aires Hora Cero - Vibratanghissimo

The Berlin based, jazz infused quartet, Vibratanghissimo, perform their own unique arrangement of Buenos Aires Hora Cero in today's featured video. Hora Cero was composed in 1963. It first appeared in the album, Tango Para Una Ciudad, and was a steady member of Piazzolla's concert repertoire. He recorded it eleven times with the last being on the Lausanne Concert album in 1989, only nine months before a stroke silenced his music. The piece is said to describe that mote in time at midnight when it is neither yesterday nor today. It is one of his most recognizable pieces with a steady stream of quarter notes - F#, G#, A, G# - underlying the entire piece with the sound of sirens and things that go bump in the night almost randomly dispersed throughout.

To their credit, Vibratanghissimo have not chosen to reproduce any of the eleven versions that Piazzolla recorded (and there are differences between most of them) but have created their own work while still, unmistakeably, honoring the original. They dispense with most of the sirens and bumps and add their own introduction of uncertainty before the inevitable F#, G#, A, G# enters almost imperceptibly a minute into the piece. Oli Bott's work on the vibraphone is very reminiscent of Gary Burton's version but does not duplicate it - it is Bott's own vision of the work. The bassist, Arnulf Ballhorn, is steady but creatively goes beyond the quarter note ground. The pianist, Tuyêt Pham, stays in the background often just doubling the bass part - I would like to have heard more. And the violist, Juan Lucas Aisemberg (perhaps a nephew of Hugo Aisenberg, pianist and Director of the Centro Astor Piazzolla in Pesaro, Italy?) provides a restrained and sensitive voice alongside the vibraphone. You can hear more of Vibratanghissimo's interpretations of Piazzolla on their CD, Astor.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Toque - Choreography by Denise Locilento

I do not have the vocabulary to properly discuss the work in today's featured video but find it unusual enough and interesting enough to include it in this blog.

It is a work of modern dance titled Toque (which I believe translates roughly to the English noun, touch), choreographed by Brazilian, Denise Locilento, to the music of Piazzolla's Adios Nonino. In comparison to other modern dance performances done to Piazzolla's music, I am struck in this dance by the refreshing lack of hackneyed pseudo tango moves and by the detailed coordination of movement with the music. Even the movement of the fingers is coordinated. Those periods where the dancers form into clumps of writhing arms capture, for me, exactly the spirit of the music at that point as does the halting forward-backward movement found ca. 4' 15" into the video. I simply do not have words to describe what goes on in the video but I watched it all with anticipation, fascination and a smile. I only regret that the video ends abruptly before the music and, presumably the dance, reaches a climax.

This blog recently featured Paul Taylor's famous Caldera which is danced to Piazzolla's Escualo. While Ms. Locilento's work does, admittedly, not have the elegance of Tayor's work, I find it much more intellectually challenging and a much better transmitter of the emotion contained in the music. I can find almost literally no information on the web about Ms. Locilento or this dance troupe but to my very amateur eye, the dance, Toque, and these dancers deserve to be famous.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Angels - Kevin Kenner and Piazzoforte

Kevin Kenner is one of the best known young pianists in the classical world: renowned as an interpreter of Chopin on period instruments but less known as an interpreter of Piazzolla, which is a mistake - he is one of the best as demonstrated in today's video of a suite arranged from Piazzolla's Angel series. The Angel series were originally composed as incidental music for Alberto Rodriguez Muñoz's 1962 stage play, Tango del Angel.

Kenner was born in Southern California but at an early age transcended country with studies around the world. He currently splits residency between London, where he on the faculty of the Royal College of Music, and Krakow, where his heart appears to be. Kenner "discovered" Piazzolla at a concert by a tango ensemble led by bassist, Grzegorz Frankowski and later joined elements of that ensemble to form Piazzoforte and record a successful album, Piazzoforte, although that album was criticized for not including a bandoneón. That criticism has been addressed in today's video by the addition of the superb German bandoneónist, Christian Gerber.

The performance in the video occurred near midnight on August 15, 2010, at the Dominican Church of St. Trinity in Krakow as part of the third annual Sacred Nights program. There were evidently some concerns over the propriety of performing tango music in the church. Those concerns were unjustified as it becomes immediately apparent with the opening notes that this is music of the spirit - not of the flesh. The music they play is an arrangement of at least three of the Angel series and the arrangement is probably that of Frankowski and Bernard Chmielarz, based on that of José Bragato as found on the Piazzoforte album. Unfortunately, the continuity of the performance is interrupted by both narrative and creative film editors but you can nevertheless feel the magic of the evening. This is beautiful music, well played.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

St. Louis en l'Ile - Akoz Duo

Today's video provides a rare opportunity to hear the obscure Piazzolla composition, St. Louis en l'Ile. The piece is performed by Julie Salamagnou (viola) and Olivier Babaz (contrabass), both currently residents of Montreal, Canada, who together are known as the Akoz Duo.

St. Louis en l'Ile is a potentially important piece of music. It was composed, probably in 1955, while Piazzolla was studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Its importance lies in the seeds it contains of the next twenty-five years of his composing. No other work from this period contains more of the musical gestures, the phrases, the rhythmic patterns that are familiar to students of Piazzolla's music. It very clearly presages the nuevo tango for which he was to become famous. It deserves not only some scholarly attention but also much broader interpretation by those performing the music of Piazzolla.

Piazzolla never recorded St. Louis en l'Ile but the composition somehow survived and was published in a collection of piano/accordion arrangements of Piazzolla's early music. I believe it was first recorded, on accordion, in 1996 in the Sono Punch album, Astor Piazzolla - Hommage. It has been recorded several times since then, most notably by French singer, Brigitte Fontaine, as the title track on her CD, Rue Saint Louis en l'Île, with the Gotan Project providing the instrumental accompaniment. Of the versions of St. Louis en l'Ile that I have heard, the one in today's video by the Akoz Duo is the most satisfying. Their style, which combines classical and jazz in much the same way as did Piazzolla's, opened my ears to the strong nuevo tango roots in the piece. I hope others will note this and that someday soon, we will have a Piazzolla style quintet record the piece. Until that day arrives, the Akoz Duo version will remain the best interpretation available of the work.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Libertango - Matheus Rodrigues Septet

It would not be fair to say that arrangements of Libertango are a dime-a-dozen but after viewing at least fragments of 2,000 performances of Libertango over the past twenty months, it is fair to say that there are a few memorably bad arrangements, a few memorably good arrangements and a whole lot of totally forgettable arrangements. There are several things that will help me remember Matheus Rodrigues' arrangement and the performance of his septet in today's featured video. The video captures a live performance of the septet at the Savassi Festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil on 1 August, 2010.

First, the guitar playing of Rodrigues himself - he is confident and creative, reminiscent of a young, but spartan, Al Di Meola. Second the quality of the musicians around him. They are all good but I am particularly struck by the tone and phrasing of Jonatha Max on the trombone and by the steady, solid foundation provided by bassist, Mauricio Ribeiro and drummer, Mateus Espinha. Interestingly, Ribeiro and Rodrigues exchange instruments in the other two videos they have posted and seem equally or more comfortable in that configuration. The arrangement of Libertango moves the lead nicely but I was disappointed not to hear more from the rabeca of Rodrigo Salvador. The rabeca shares an ancestor with the violin and was brought to Brazil by the Portuguese before the luthiers of Cremona had perfected the violin. While it has survived mostly as a folk instrument in rural parts of Brazil, it is enjoying something a revival today and it is interesting to hear jazz sounding from the strings of a rabeca. You can hear the rebeca and appreciate the gypsy-like stylings of Salvador much better in the video of Oito, a Rodrigues composition. The talents of the saxophone players, Leo Barreto and Tiago Ramos, are also more apparent in that video.

This is a tight jazz band developing a style of their own. It is difficult to keep a band this young and this big together long enough to achieve recognition but this group has a shot at making it in the challenging world of jazz. I hope they will include more Piazzolla in their development.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Monday, August 16, 2010

Contest Contrast

We have a pair of contrasting videos today. Both are from "reality" television. Both are "dance" contests. Both feature tangos choreographed to music composed by Astor Piazzolla. Neither are very subtle. But the things that makes them interesting are the areas of contrast.

The first is from the U.S.A. show, So You Think You Can Dance, on the Fox Network. The featured dancer is 18 year-old,Lauren Froderman, who is dancing to the music of Oblivion with partner Pasha Kovalev. Choreographers of their dance were Miriam Larici and Leonardo Barrionuevo. The dance is well crafted, athletic and sensual - something you might see in a tango show but not at a milonga. The purpose of the dance is to look good and to entertain. Nothing more.

Contrast that video to the second one which was posted from Lithuania. The only information about the video comes in a voice-over in a language I don't understand (Russian, I think). It is clearly a television program with a live audience and I see what looks like a panel of judges which suggests to me that this is also a "reality TV" dance contest. The central part of the dance is choreographed to Piazzolla's Adios Nonino. The dance is well crafted and the dancers are skillful although again, their dance is not something you will see at a milonga. The purpose of the dance, however, is not to entertain but rather to tell a story and it does so with dramatic directness. To some, perhaps, with disturbing directness.

Compare and contrast.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for the U.S.A. video and here for the Lithuanian video.

Embedding is disabled for the U.S.A. video so you must click here to watch it.



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Sunday, August 15, 2010

Time in a Bottle

It was Jim Croce who sang about saving time in a bottle. It must have been evenings like that captured in today's video that inspired his song. Strollers are enjoying a late summer evening on the famous Charles Bridge in Prague. The tour boats on the river Vltava glide under the bridge. Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral glow over the river and completing the moment are the strains of Libertango being played by a lone accordionist, his case open for donations, sitting in the dark near the rail of the bridge.

While the strollers no doubt enjoyed the music and probably even remember the moment today, chances are they were not aware that the accordionist, Evgen Lisniak, was one of the best young composers and accordionists in Europe. Lisniak is a Ukranian by birth who, with his wife, a talented violinist, moved to Prague in 2007 to study at the Prague Conservatory. He graduated from that conservatory probably just a few months before this video was made in August, 2009. That same year, Lisniak and his wife won first prize as duo performers at the Third Piazzolla Competition in Lanciano, Italy - perhaps playing something very similar to the Libertango you hear in this video. You can see him in the solo part of that competition here and in a more recent video performing Cobian's classic tango, Los Mareados, with his violinist wife. As a duo, they cover many Piazzolla compositions and I certainly hope video of some of those will eventually be found on YouTube.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Sunday, August 8, 2010

Tanguano - Kremer & Argerich

In the hands of Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich, Tanguano, featured in today's video, sounds like something composed by Piazzolla for the Kronos Quartet near the end of his career. In fact, it was composed in 1949 at the beginning of his career.

Tanguano is the first section of Dos Piezas Breves (the second section is Noche) composed for viola and piano. The work was "rediscovered" by Allison Brewster Franzetti and included in her excellent 1999 recording, The Unknown Piazzolla. That recording titles the piece Tanguango rather than Tanguano. Without access to the original score, I cannot resolve the proper title but can only note that in 1951, Piazzolla composed and arranged a piece for Anibal Troilo which is titled, Tanguango (it can be heard here). The pieces are quite different in settings but clearly related since they share several motifs (see the Tanguango Twins). The convention seems to be emerging to use Tanguango for tango or jazz versions of the work and Tanguano for classical versions of the work.

I believe the Kremer/Argerich version was captured in November of 1994 in a performance in Tokyo. While Franzetti's performance is "buttoned-down", precise and orderly the Kremer/Argerich version is "torn T-shirt", aggressive and, in the case of Mr. Kremer, barely in control. The performance is my favorite of Ms. Argerich's canon of Piazzolla performances and my least favorite of Mr. Kremer's. But any performance of Piazzolla which combines the talents of these two legendary musicians is a treat.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Saturday, August 7, 2010

July, 2010 Review of Piazzolla Videos

There were 666 videos of Piazzolla’s music posted on YouTube in the month of July, 2010, an increase of 19% over July, 2009. 459 (69%) of the videos were performance videos featuring live performances. The others were videos which used Piazzolla’s music as a sound track for dancing or photo/video montages. I highlighted my journey through these many videos in this blog.

Forty-seven percent of the performance videos were in the classical mode, 11% in jazz, 19% in nuevo tango and 23% in pop.

Here are the most frequently performed pieces this month (Libertango was the most frequently played – 29% of the total; the others follow in order):

1. Libertango
2. Oblivion
3. Adios Nonino
4. Invierno Porteño
5. Verano Porteño
6. Otoño Porteño
7. Histoire du tango - Bordel 1900
8. Primavera Porteña
9. La muerte del angel
10. Histoire du tango - Cafè 1930

The top three on this list seem to be fairly stable month-to-month but the bottom seven change every month. Sixty-five different compositions were covered in the videos this month.

The performance videos came from 49 different countries. Italy posted the most videos: 61. The top ten posting countries are listed in order here:

1. Italy
2. USA
3. Argentina
4. Germany
5. Russia
6. Brazil
7. Japan
8. France
9. Spain
10. Poland

There were four Piazzolla original performances posted. All but one, Years of Solitude, had been previously posted.

Quality of performance varied from excellent to bizarre. My choice for best of the month is the original Piazzolla/Mulligan performance of Years of Solitude. If that video does not appear below, click here.

The choice for most bizarre this month is a concert version of Milonga del trovador by the virtual musician, Joaquin Gustav, in the virtual world of Second Life. If that video does not appear below, click here.

I have put a table with links to all 666 videos as well as some more information on the videos on the July, 2010 link in my Piazzolla on Video website.

Best Video of the Month


Most Bizarre Video of the Month


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Friday, August 6, 2010

One Is Not Enough

One pianist is not enough. That seems to be the consensus when concert quality pianists approach Piazzolla's works. With the exception of what is usually referred to as the Adios Nonino Rhapsody, an expanded version of the piano intro Piazzolla wrote for his quintet pianist, Dante Amicarelli, there are no concert quality solo piano arrangements of Piazzolla's works. But there is no shortage of concert quality piano duet versions of many of his works. Another is added with today's video of a new two piano version of Meditango played by Margarita Harytuinjan and Julia Umrikchina. Significantly, the arrangement is by one of the world's best piano duoist, Gennady Pystin, selected in 2008 as an Honored Artist of Russia for his contributions to duo piano music. Regrettably, I can find no information about the pianists. Although the audio quality of the video is not very good, they are obviously talented pianists and I am amazed that they can remain synchronized so well with the "head-to-tail" piano arrangement they have been assigned. Normally, duo pianos are set up "tail-to-tail" so the two pianists can see each other over the keyboards and thus have visual cues which help synchronization. You can also hear them in a very fast duo piano version of Libertango which I would venture to guess was also arranged by Pystin.

If you are interested in duo piano versions of Piazzolla works, I suggest you review the work of Duoalleviguidi, Isolda Crespi Rubio and Ingrid Sotolarova, Martha Argerich and Eduardo Hubert,and Emanuel Ax and Pablo Ziegler. I would also point out that there are many excellent arrangements of Piazzolla works which fall easily within the talent of intermediate skilled pianists available from Alma Music. Most of the YouTube videos of Piazzolla played on solo piano come directly from the Alma scores.

If the Meditango video does not appear below, click here.



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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Caldera - Paul Taylor Dance Company

Paul Taylor, the dancer and choreographer, celebrated his 80th birthday last week. Our featured video today features the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing his work, Caldera, to the music of Piazzolla's Escualo. The performance was videod this week at the Vail International Dance Festival in Vail, Colorado. Taylor studied at Julliard, founded his dance company in 1954 and has danced with Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and George Balanchine. He is an icon in the dance world.

Caldera was premiered in 1997 and I believe that most dance critics would agree it is among Taylor's half-dozen best works. I have no competence to review the dance but if you Google "paul taylor caldera review" you will find more than 10,000 hits and many of them are actual reviews since Caldera has been danced by many dance companies in many cities all over the world. I scanned many of them and it is rare to find a negative comment.

The music for the dance is Escualo (it translates to shark), composed in 1979 - one of the most rhythmically challenging of all Piazzolla's work. Paul Taylor choreographed the work very specifically to the version of Escualo arranged by Svjatoslav Lips and recorded by Gidon Kremer on the CD, Hommage á Piazzolla. Curiously, today's video and many of the reviews of the work credit the music to Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Petersburski. This is an error. Although one of Petersburski's compositions appears on the Hommage á Piazzolla CD, I can assure you that he had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Escualo. Perhaps mention of his name is a legal necessity due to the use of the music directly from the Hommage á Piazzolla recording but it is unfortunate and is evidently replicated in the program notes at every performance of the work.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Tom Waits - Astor Piazzolla

I have often wondered if it was possible to bring Tom Waits into a blog about Piazzolla's music. It seemed unlikely but just as fate delivered songs of dubious origin to Waits, YouTube has delivered Nadiamar to Piazzolla on Video. Unlikely as it might seem, Nadiamar has merged the Piazzolla classic, Libertango, with the Tom Waits classic, Temptation for today's video. Isn't creativity amazing?

Admittedly, more than a little Diana Krall influence is apparent in the video but that does not take away one bit from the sultry singing and impressive guitar work of Nadja Kossinkaja. Ms. Kossinkaja is a classically trained guitarist from Kiev, Ukraine who has also studied in Germany and Italy (you can see some of her serious guitar work here being played on a guitar built by Theo Scharpach). The other half of the Nadiamar duo is Matthias Rethmann, a jazz bassist who has served as sideman to a number of jazz greats before forming Nadiamar. Interestingly, if you go to the Musik/Video section of their website, you will find three demo songs: one composed by Tom Waits (Temptation), one composed by Piazzolla (Oblivion) and one composed by J.S. Bach (Air in G). If they add a fourth by Turlough O'Carolan, they will qualify for the Nobel Prize in music.

This duo is very, very good. As far as I can determine, they have no recordings yet and are only beginning to tour but I see a great future for them and look forward to more of their music.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Balada para un loco - Roxana Fontán & Horacio Ferrer

To continue with the Horacio Ferrer theme from the preceding blog posting, today's video features the second of his three famous Balada - this one, the most famous, Balada para un loco, sung by Roxana Fontán with an recitative assist from Ferrer who created the lyrics to the song.

The story of Balada para un loco has been told here before but this is the first time I have seen Ferrer involved in a production of the piece. Ms. Fontán, the beautiful singer who accompanies Ferrer has been featured here before in one of the most popular blog posts on this site. Her talents are obvious here and she rightfully deserves to be considered one of the best interpreters of Piazzolla's canción catalog.

This video represents the very most recent portrait of Ferrer, now 77 year old, since it was made just two days ago at the Tango Torri Festival held at beautiful Torri del Benaco on Lake Garda in Italy. The festival this year was dedicated to Osvaldo Zotto, one of the premier tango dancers of the century who died unexpectedly at the age of 46 earlier this year. His brother, Miguel Angel Zotto, also a famous tango dancer was featured at the festival and can be glimpsed in the background during the Ferrer/Fontán performance.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Balada para mi muerte - Horacio Ferrer

It is a minimalist, performance masterpiece: Horacio Ferrer reciting the lyrics, the poem would be equally correct, he composed in 1969 to accompany Piazzolla's, Balada para mi muerte with the refined and unobtrusive guitar solo work of Juanjo Dominguez in the background of today's featured video. As usually performed, the music and vocal acrobatics are so powerful in this piece that the words lose some of their chilling finality. For example, the performance by Mina and Piazzolla is, to many, the definitive performance of the piece. The beauty of today's video is in the poetry and if you should want to read the poem, you will find it here.

According to the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, the relationship between Piazzolla and Ferrer began in 1948 when Ferrer was a student attending a Piazzolla recital. It was renewed in 1955 when Ferrer sought out Piazzolla, perhaps for poetic inspiration, but did not become a collaboration until 1967 when Ferrer encountered Piazzolla just as the idea for the operita, Maria de Buenos Aires, was being formed. He provided the libretto for that operita and continued his collaboration with Piazzolla until 1981. Ferrer continues to be an active writer, performer and commentator - most recently performing just two days ago in the show, Piazzolla y Ferrer, in Torri del Benaco (a topic for the next blog posting).

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Libertango - Hamilton de Holanda & Edmar Castaneda

Libertango provides the theme and the chordal structure for today's featured video but the music is provided by Hamilton de Holanda on mandolin and Edmar Castaned on harp. These two gentleman take their instruments (and Libertango) to worlds never before visited.

De Holanda was born in Rio de Janeiro and started playing the mandolin at the age of five. By the age of six he was playing on television with his father and brothers. Today a master of many instruments, he primarily plays a ten string mandolin built expressly for him by luthier, Vergilio Lima. De Holanda has recorded roughly a dozen albums including his latest, Brasilianos 2 and toured around the world.

Castaneda is in an earlier stage of his career. He is a native of Columbia and plays a Columbian harp but is currently a resident of New York City where is a very active member of the jazz community performing with greats like Wynton Marsalis and Paquito D'Rivera. He was also born into a musical family and fell naturally to the harp which is frequently found in Columbian folkloric music. Castaneda has two albums including his newest, Entre Cuerdas. The rhythmic complexity of his playing is incredible.

The two joined only briefly for a tour of Brazil in 2010 and, to the best of my knowledge, have not recorded together. You can see more of their joint work on 3raimperioserrano's Youtube Channel. If the Libertango is a bit too frenetic for you, I suggest you try their version of Manhã de Carnaval. Their sound is unique - I hope they find time to perform together again.

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