Thursday, December 30, 2010

Nightclub 1960 - Dizi

While most of our blog series about Piazzolla on unusual instruments have featured Libertango, today the series expands to include Nightclub 1960 from the Histoire du tango suite originally composed for flute and guitar. The instrument is unusual in the western world but is quite common in the Chinese world. It is a bamboo flute, the dizi (pronounced Dee Zzzt – like a bumble bee sound). The musicians in the video are Diao Peng (dizi) and Xu Weiting (piano) and I would guess that they are students. Their YouTube channel suggests they are from Taiwan. Both are fine musicians. For a simple instrument, the dizi is played here not only with precision and agility but also with a remarkable level of expression. Note the well done "slides" at 4'30"into the video. A very enjoyable performance.

The dizi has six finger holes and is blown from nearer the middle of the instrument than the western flute. But the most unusual feature is a seventh hole, located between the embouchure and the first finger hole, which is covered with a thin membrane called a dimo). At higher breath pressures, the dimo vibrates adding a buzzy distortion to the tone (anticipating the electric guitar distortion pedal by 2,000 years). Managing the distortion becomes another part of the musicians art in the music. Note that Mr. Diao taps the dimo before he starts playing - I guess to make sure it is working. And it does indeed work. You will hear the unique timbre throughout the piece.

Dizi's come in a dizzying (sorry about that) variety of sizes and keys - you can see them all at Eason Music.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



Note added 28 April, 2011: The original version of this blog incorrectly identified the musicians. I believe it is correct as now shown above.

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La Bicicleta Blanca - Francisco Llanos

Some singers are magicians - they not only sing the song, they transport the audience to another place. Such is the case in this performance by Francisco Llanos. The conditions are not ideal - a municipal salon in Rio Cuarto which has probably seen more press conferences than concerts; no live band, just a recording for accompaniment through a sound system with a little too much reverb. But Llanos, born in Rio Cuarto, has his home town audience spell-bound and visibly moved in his part recitation, part singing performance of La bicicleta blanca.

La bicicleta blanca was composed by Piazzolla in 1971, with lyrics by Horacio Ferrer. The music is almost incidental to the lyrics, which you can find here in the original Spanish and with an English translation. It is one of those poems full of symbolism and levels of meaning that literature professors love to ask students to interpret. It was first recorded by Amelita Baltar in the album titled La Bicicleta Blanca but popularized largely in these versions by José Angel Trelles and Raúl Lavié. From the perspective of just singing the song, all three of those performers may surpass Llanos but for sheer magic, Llanos wins the prize.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Sunday, December 26, 2010

Three Piazzolla Originals

Today features three videos, all new to YouTube and all with important original Piazzolla content. The first video includes several minutes from the July 11, 1983 concert at the Teatro de Colón which the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, describes as "Piazzolla's apotheosis." Piazzolla and the Colón orchestra under the baton of Pedro Ignacio Calderón closed the concert with Adios Nonino and took five bows during a ten minute standing ovation. The voice-over in the video is Piazzolla's. The full concert can be heard on the difficult to find recording, Astor Piazzolla: En El Teatro Colón. Much of the concert can also be heard on the reissue CD, Concierto de Nácar, but unfortunately, Adios Nonino is not on that CD regardless of what it says on the label.

The second video contains no Piazzolla performances but does contain a Piazzolla voice-over and a priceless selection of Piazzolla family photographs. The video is a dramatization of Piazzolla's creation of Adios Nonino. The traditional story has Piazzolla composing the piece in the kitchen on a bandoneón, not on the piano as in this video. I believe that this video and the first video of the Teatro Colón performance are from Eliseo Alvarez's 1997 movie, Queréme así, piantao (also known as Astortango in Britain and the U.S.A.). To my knowledge, this movie has never been issued as a DVD but it apparently has been broadcast on HBO as a made-for-TV movie. Hopefully, we will see more from this movie in the future.

The third video captures fragments from a 1974 television broadcast on TV Tupi from São Paulo, Brazil. The first fragment features the Piazzolla quintet playing Invierno Porteño. The second fragment is Balada para un loco with Amelita Baltar doing the vocal. This is the only video I am aware of featuring the "re-formed" first quintet which existed briefly in 1974-75. It may also be the only video of Piazzolla performing with Baltar and is almost certainly the last since they separated, professionally and personally, shortly after this video was made. The pianist in the "re-formed" quintet was Osvaldo Tarantino but the pianist in this video does not appear to be Tarantino. Nor does he resemble Danti Amicarelli (see photo here) who sometimes substituted for Tarantino in the quintet. I might speculate that the pianist is Luigi Giudici who recorded with Piazzolla in Brazil during this period on his recordings with Ney Matogrosso but I find no photos of Mr. Giudici on the internet. It is a mystery. I am hoping a reader can help identify the pianist in the video and leave a comment below. Hopefully, more of this television appearance has survived and we will see it in its entirety in the future.

Note added 27 December, 2010: Mystery solved. The pianist is indeed Dante Amicarelli. Thanks to Daniel P. for the positive I.D.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for the Teatro Colón performance, here for the Adios Nonino story, and here for the video from São Paulo.







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Christmas Eve Duet - Romero and Di Meola

What do the great jazz guitarists Hernan Romero and Al Di Meola do at home on Christmas eve? They play a little Piazzolla. Today's video captures an informal moment with these two artists playing "unplugged" in someone's home. From the gold records on display behind them, I would guess it is one of their homes and since Romero posted the video, it is probably his.

The two have a long history of collaboration with ten recordings together including Di Meola Plays Piazzolla, which belongs in every Piazzolla lover's collection. Interestingly, I believe the piece they are playing, Vuelvo al sur in today's video, has never been recorded by either of them. Perhaps this is an informal rehearsal for an upcoming recording? Let's hope so.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Adios Nonino - Walter Rios

Magnificent and moving: two words which best capture for me the Walter Rios interpretation of Adios Nonino in today's video. This is perhaps the best orquesta típica arrangement of the piece I have ever heard. Adios Nonino, while not performed as frequently as Libertango, is still arguably Piazzolla's most famous composition. The Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, suggests that Piazzolla wrote at least twenty arrangements of Adios Nonino and those range from solo bandoneón to full orchestra. The arrangement he provided for his famous duo concert with Osvaldo Pugliese would qualify as an orquesta típica arrangement but Rios has captured the breadth of the composition even better here and even includes a little salute to Pugliese in one of the more joyous moments in the arrangement.

Adios Nonino was composed in 1959, at the time of the death of Piazzolla's father - known to Piazzolla's children as Nonino (translates approximately as "little grandfather"). It was based on a joyful tango he had composed earlier, titled Nonino, but contrasted that melody with musical expressions of the sorrow felt strongly at the time. The best arrangements always capture both the joy of remembrance and the sorrow of passing and Rios does that beautifully here. The poignancy communicated in the bandoneón solo at roughly five minutes into the video is just perfect.

While I believe this performance is new to YouTube, it is actually from a famous August, 2005 performance at ND Ateneo which included many of the most famous tango musicians of the day. It was a complicated arrangement in which the musicians alternated through roles of performer, arranger and conductor - sometimes doing all three as Rios does in this video. In addition to Rios, members of the orquesta tipica are Ernesto Baffa, Horacio Romo, and Pablo Mainetti on bandoneón; Mario Abramovich, Eduardo Walczak, Mauricio Marchelli, Damián Bolotín, Pablo Agri, and Miguel Angel Bertero on violin, Mario Fiocca on viola; Diego Sánchez on cello; Horacio Cabarcos on contrabass; and Nicolás Ledesma on piano. The beautiful violin solo which Rios generously acknowledges was by the reigning dean of tango violinist, Mario Abramovich.

This performance is available as Seleccion Nacional de Tango: En Vivo in both CD and DVD formats.

My thanks to the poster of the video, Carla Romma, for the additional information which made this blog posting possible.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Thursday, December 16, 2010

Fuga y Misterio - Branford Marsalis & Pablo Ziegler

There is no more famous family in the jazz world than the Marsalis family: father Ellis and sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason. They released a new family album in 2010, Music Redeems. It's full of great music and the proceeds from sales of the album go to support their music education foundation which is part of the New Orleans Musicians' Village. With that public service announcement taken care of, we turn to today's video in which brother Branford brings his saxophones and joins Pablo Ziegler's quartet on stage at New York's Jazz Standard club for some Piazzolla in the jazz mode. Fortunately for us crmusica was there to capture it on video.

The work they cover is Fuga y misterio, one of the instrumental interludes from Piazzolla's operita Maria de Buenos Aires. Ziegler is there with his current quartet: Claudio Ragazzi on guitar, Hector DelCurto on bandoneón, and Pedro Giraudo on bass. This quartet has been reviewed before in this blog and they are worth reviewing again but it is Branford Marsalis that makes today's video special. Marsalis joins them first with his tenor sax and then switches mid-piece to the soprano sax. We are treated to solos on both instruments. Ziegler has no doubt played the piece hundreds of times but his sound is still fresh and creative. I supposed that Marsalis was new to the piece - you may note he is checking music or charts as he proceeds. But, I was wrong. Ziegler and Marsalis visited Fuga y misterio together at least once before in 2005 at a gala for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. I suspect that encounter was the direct precursor to the meeting in this video which happened only about two weeks ago.

Ziegler will never qualify for membership in the Marsalis family but the Ziegler-Marsalis duo certainly qualifies for more Piazzolla together. Wouldn't it be interesting if Branford brought his brothers along for the gig?

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Maria de Buenos Aires - Cambra XX, Again

In May of this year, this blog enthused about Pablo Zinger's 2009 production in Valencia of Piazzolla's operita, Maria de Buenos Aires. Zinger brought the production back on stage last month at the Teatro Serrano in Gandia and the videos of that production have just started to arrive on YouTube. I won't repeat here what I said in the May blog but just remind you that this may well be the best production of Maria since the original in 1968. Zinger just keeps getting better and better.

The Gandia production appears to be very similar to the one in Valencia. The vocalists are the same, staging seems the same and most of the orchestra is the same. But there are differences: a new narrator, Leonardo Granados - he's good, but a narrator with a little more gravitas would be better; new dancers and choreography - more aggressive and interesting; and, an oboe has been added to the orchestra - not an instrument found in Piazzolla's original production but Zinger has orchestrated it in beautifully and I view it as an improvement over the original.

As I write this, there are six videos from the production on YouTube and I hope there will be more. The entire production is not there yet. You can find the set of videos on Robert Turlo's YouTube channel (incidentally, Turlo is the artistic director of the production and also the oboist). I have chosen to display the introductory video below because it includes an introduction by Zinger but most of the music resides in the other five videos. The quality of the video is quite high, suggesting perhaps a DVD is on the way. I certainly hope so - I would like to add it to my permanent collection.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Rhapsody Harmonica Ensemble

The harmonica and the bandoneón are first cousins - related through the bisonic reed arrangement they share. And, performances where the harmonica replaces the bandoneón are not uncommon; but, the Rhapsody Harmonica Ensemble seen in today's videos goes beyond that and uses harmonicas to replace not only all of Piazzolla's quintet but also all of the Kronos Quartet.

I am not sure of the harmonica group's name: Google Translate suggests the group is called Crazy Ring Harmonica Orchestra but a related Facebook page suggests the name, Rhapsody Harmonica Ensemble. Under either name, these are special harmonica players who play a large variety of music, much of which can be seen on konekome's YouTube Channel. I believe the leader of this Taiwan ensemble is Chen Sheng Yi and if he is responsible for the musical arrangements and the training of the group, he is to be congratulated.

Two videos are included below. The first is Fear, the last of five movements of Tango Sensations which Piazzolla composed for the Kronos Quartet in 1989. He and the quartet recorded the work on one of Piazzolla's last recordings: Piazzolla: Five Tango Sensations. It is a difficult piece, even for an experienced string quartet, and I am amazed at the audacity of a harmonica ensemble to even attempt to play the piece. The ensemble handles the difficult fugues well and only stumbles once in one of the middle transitional sections. The second piece is Invierno Porteño, played here by a trio of harmonicas. The musicality these three put into the piece with such simple instruments is just astounding. If you watch nothing else, watch they way they end the piece starting with Piazzolla's salute to Vivaldi at six minutes into the video.

If you, like me, can't quite get enough of such unexpected artistry, also take a look at this samba.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for Fear and here for Invierno Porteño.





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Monday, December 13, 2010

Michelangelo 70 - Trivella Piano Duo

Perhaps there is a touch on the sustain pedal somewhere in this 4-hands-1-piano rendition of Michelangelo 70 by twin brothers, Davide and Daniele Trivella, but it eludes my ears. This is some of the most precise and well synchronized keyboard work you will ever see. Rarely is key release managed as well as it is here by the Trivellas and the result is an energetic and driving version of Michelangelo 70 which makes most other readings of the piece sound almost casual in comparison.

Michelangelo 70 is particularly popular with jazz artists and just misses making the list of the twenty most frequently played Piazzolla compositions. It was written in 1969 or 70 to honor the move of a favorite performance venue, the Michelangelo, to a new location in San Telmo. You can watch Piazzolla and his quintet perform the piece in this video. One might argue that the Ziegler/Ax duo piano version found on the CD, Los Tangueros is closer to the original but I believe the Trivella duo arrangement is more appropriate for piano.

As much as I enjoyed the video, I would have enjoyed it even more if the video editor had been more sparing with the video effects - they detract from the music. Fortunately, you can enjoy the music without the video by buying their CD, One and One - Are One.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Sunday, December 12, 2010

November, 2010 Review of Piazzolla Videos

There were 1028 videos of Piazzolla’s music posted on YouTube in the month of November, 2010, an increase of 58% over the same month in 2009. 607 (59%) of the videos were performance videos featuring live performances. The others were videos which used Piazzolla’s music as a sound track for photo or video montages. I highlighted my journey through these many videos in this blog and in Twitter.

Thirty-nine percent of the performance videos were in the classical mode, 15% in jazz, 19% in nuevo tango and 27% in pop.

Here are the most frequently performed pieces this month (Libertango was the most frequently played – 34% of the total; the others follow in order):

1. Libertango
2. Oblivion
3. Adios Nonino
4. La muerte del ángel
5. Invierno Porteño
6. Verano Porteño
7. Primavera Porteña
8. Histoire du tango – Café 1930
9. Balada para un loco
10. Histoire du tango – Nightclub 1960 / Le grand tango (tie)

The top three on this list seem to be fairly stable month-to-month but the bottom seven change every month.

The performance videos came from 55 different countries. Argentina posted the most videos: 94. The top ten posting countries are listed in order here:

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

There were nine Piazzolla originals posted. All but one had been previously posted. The new video featured Piazzolla and Julien Clerc in a performance of Balada para un loco.

Quality of performance varied from excellent to bizarre. My choice for Best of the Month is the Pan Am Symphony's performance of Fracanapa. This is just one performance from a full evenings performance which seamlessly integrated a nuevo tango quartet with a chamber orchestra.

The choice for most bizarre this month is a performance of Adios Nonino chosen for its consistent use of avant-garde harmony.

Best Video of the Month


Most Bizarre Video of the Month


I have put a table with links to all 1028 videos as well as some more information on the videos on the November, 2010 page in my Piazzolla on Video website.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Igudesman and Joo

John Malkovich joins the fun with Igudesman & Joo. Be patient, Piazzolla enters the party shorty before the beautiful, naked, Argentinian girl arrives.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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Friday, December 10, 2010

Adios Nonino - Eric and Solene Le Van

As a performance of Adios Nonino, today's featured video may not provide the best; but, as a showcase for musical talent, it will be difficult to find better. The musicians are father and daughter: Eric Le Van and his twelve year old daughter Solene. Le Van is an American born pianist, well recognized for his technical talents but perhaps even more so for his interpretive skills. His recordings are limited but his readings of Brahms and Liszt are judged highly by the critics. His destiny, though, may be to become known simply as Solene's dad or Sarah's dad or Sean's dad. The Le Van's are a musical family - a professionally performing musical family whose work can be sampled in this video. The talent in the family appears natural and considerable.

The younger daughter Solene, already a prize winning violinist, is featured in today's video. The video opens with Eric performing the introduction to Adios Nonino which Piazzolla wrote for Dante Amicarelli - one of several pianists who played in Piazzolla's first quintet. Piazzolla wrote at least three piano introductions for Adios Nonino - Amicarelli's is the best known and an extended version of it, known as the Adios Nonino Rhapsody, is sometimes played as an encore piece. In the original Piazzolla recording, found on the famous Trova recording, Amicarelli plays the intro in 2'40" - Le Van adds another thirty seconds of drama in his reading but is otherwise faithful to the original. The following duet portion is original in content and enjoyable but, for me, the real interest arrives 5'45" into the piece when twelve year old Solene volunteers a cadenza, presumably of her own creation. The cadenza is creative, appropriate to the theme and technically well performed. Consistency is always the counter weight to creativity and suffers a bit here but at this stage of her career, the cadenza is a remarkable accomplishment. The father-daughter duo close the piece conventionally leaving this listener anxious to hear more Piazzolla from the pair - perhaps the Histoire du tango series?

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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

His Master's Voice

It's cold and quiet but the audience is attentive. The music is good and the video totally captivated me.

The music is Adios Nonino. I don't know the dog's name but the musician is Pablo Corradini. Corradini has appeared in this blog before - he is the bandoneónist for the best tango-rock-fusion band in the world: Oblivion Quartet. The text accompanying the video suggests the evening was boring. I don't think so.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



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