Saturday, May 14, 2011

Libertango - Colburn Chamber Orchestra

Dear Reader,

I don't want you to read this blog posting, at least not all of it ... yet. First, please use the "click here" link at the end of this paragraph to trigger the video. As soon as the video starts to play, pause it and move the play cursor to the one minute mark. Now restart it and enjoy the performance. When it is done, please return and continue reading. Now, click here.

Now that you have enjoyed today's video of Libertango, can you believe that the arrangement was done by a seventeen year old student, Matthew John Ignacio? I have viewed, at least in part, more than 3,000 YouTube videos of Libertango performances in the past two years and can confidently say that this is one of the best chamber orchestra arrangements of the piece in existence. It is not just the arrangement that makes the video special, it is also the performance. Did you note the left-hand finger snaps used by Ignacio to start the piece? I don't know if this was a conscious tribute to Piazzolla or not but that is exactly the way that Piazzolla would set the beat and trigger the opening for his quintet in rehearsal and, frequently, in performance.

The musicians are from the Colburn School in Los Angeles, California and if you go back and watch that one minute introduction that I asked you to skip, you will learn that Libertango was developed and rehearsed by the Colburn Chamber Orchestra themselves - off of regular rehearsal times. Their performance is flawless - synchronized as if they shared an implanted timing chip - and in perfect balance. Maxim Eshkenazy usually conducts the group but it is apparent here that they are performing without a conductor - something only the best chamber orchestras can do. Colburn School has appeared in this blog once before. It is a remarkable institution and you will see the musicians here in the future on concert stages around the world. Although Colburn's focus is on college level conservatory training, they also provide musical training for children and adults.

I enjoyed Ignacio's creative use of pizzicato in the arrangement, the early syncopation in the theme, the steady habanera rhythm in the bass and the overall feeling of movement throughout the piece. That an arrangement of this sophistication could be done by a seventeen year old student is astonishing. Not that Ignacio is your typical student. At age 14 he was a graduate of Cerritos College. He is a mathematician and in addition to being a cellist and a pianist - in fact, I believe the piano and the computer are his primary instruments. He has a centered view of life which is well stated in the profile he provides on his YouTube channel. Among his many gifts, I believe composing and arranging may be his greatest and I hope he exercises that gift to create music of his own and to arrange more of Piazzolla's works in the future.

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Invierno Porteño - Arrangement by Tei-Ho

Do they roast chestnuts in Buenos Aires? The young man smiling in this photo evidently thinks so. I could be wrong, but I believe that smiling young man provides arrangements of Piazzolla's works under the name of Tei-Ho or Teho which is perhaps the anglicized version of 啼鵬, his given name (although Google translate would suggest a pronunciation something more like Che Kung). Tei-Ho has a degree in music composition and is a multi-instumentalist whose instrumental mastery extends to include the bandoneón. He is a skillful bandoneónist with an authentic sound as can be seen in this video. He is clearly an admirer of Piazzolla's music.

Tei-Ho is also a musician who enjoys a challenge. Why else would he create an arrangement of Invierno Porteño for the unlikely ensemble of string quartet, two guitars and a harmonica? Today's video captures the world premiere (and given the unusual nature of the ensemble, perhaps the only performance) of the work in the Taipei National Concert Hall in December, 2007. The musicians are a notable bunch led by well known Japanese guitarist, Shin-ichi Fukuda and chromatic harmonica player, Yasuo Watani. The second guitarist is Shih-yu Liu. The string quartet is not identified but are clearly serious and talented musicians.

Tei-Ho's arrangement begins as normally as a classical piece with a harmonica lead could - sounding much like an arrangement which would flow from the pen of José Bragato, the original source of almost all of Piazzolla's quintet works converted to classics. Then at 2'18" into the work, Vivaldi enters the piece. Intertwining Vivaldi into Piazzolla has been fair game ever since Piazzolla himself added a little Vivaldi to the end of Invierno Porteño. Leonid Desyatnikov inserted Vivaldi into Piazzolla's other three seasons for Gidon Kremer and created a healthy revenue stream for himself as those have displaced Bragato's to become the standard orchestral arrangements. Tei-Ho skillfully escorts Vivaldi out of the piece a minute or so later. But, at four minutes, in an arranging masterstroke, Tei-Ho inserts the 1946 popular Christmas song by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. To me, this is marvelous musical humor but the musicians don't smile and the audience doesn't titter - I think they would in Chicago. Piazzolla resumes just at the point where Piazzolla injects Vivaldi and the piece flows to a beautiful ending. The ensemble gets well deserved applause and I applaud Tei-Ho.

As to roasting chestnuts in Buenos Aires - the answer is, they do (search for "chestnuts" on this page).

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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Lost Tango - Ute Lemper & Piazzolla Sextet

In March, the attendees of the 2011 39th Hong Kong Arts Festival were fortunate to see Lost Tango, a program of Piazzolla's music performed by German chanteuse, Ute Lemper, and a group billed as the Piazzolla Sextet. The importance the promoters of the festival assigned to the performance was signaled by the fact that it was the finale on each of the three days of the festival. There was an early teaser video for the concert on YouTube but until today's video appeared, there has been no way the rest of us could get a glimpse of the program. The video is disappointingly short of musical highlights but there is enough there to suggest it was quite an evening.

Ute Lemper does not quite have the drama of Milva or the direct lineage to the music of Amelita Baltar but she certainly comes from the same mold as those two well established Piazzolla vocalists. She has recorded some Piazzolla in the past but this appears to be the first time she has devoted a full concert to the music of tango and, apparently, mostly to the music of Piazzolla. She sings in English in the video but a review of the concert indicates she also sang in Spanish, French and German. The Piazzolla Sextet features two veterans of Piazzolla's quintets - Hector Console on contrabass and Fernando Suarez Paz on violin. They are joined by Ricardo Lew on guitar, Marcelo Nisinman on bandoneón and a pianist who is not identified but is probably Nicolas Ledesma who frequently performs with Nisinman, Lew and Suarez Paz. The final member of the sextet is Daniel "Pipi" Piazzolla, Astor Piazzolla grandson and founder of the wonderful tango/jazz group Escalandrum. The video has interviews with Nisinman, Suarez Paz and Piazzolla but unfortunately very little music from the Sextet.

Lost Tango was assembled by British music producer Pablo Farba and is going on the road. A number of appearances have been scheduled in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland in November and December of this year with, hopefully, more to come. The scale and nature of the program suggest a DVD or at least an audio recording could be on the way.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Adios Nonino - Raúl di Blasio

What is the difference between Raúl di Blasio and Yanni? Nothing, most would say - in fact, they may actually be the same person. The hair, the doleful looks, the puffy satin shirts, the music created for Cialis® commercials - they all make a good case for that point of view. However, to my knowledge, Yanni has never played Piazzolla and as today's video of Adios Nonino demonstrates, Raúl di Blasio has.

Di Blasio was born in Zapala, Argentina in 1949. In 1969, he moved to Buenos Aires and reportedly practiced the piano 12 hours a day. He surely was aware of Piazzolla and his music at that time. It is tempting to dismiss di Blasio today as a new age pianist tapping the maudlin tastes of middle-aged women for cash but there is more to the man than that. He is a capable and serious musician who moved his talents through classical, jazz, and pop music before developing his own characteristic sound. He has played in clubs, stadiums and concert stages around the world. He is not just a technically skilled pianist - he is an arranger, an improviser and a composer. There are many parallels between Piazzolla and di Blasio as performers, but not as composers. Even di Blasio's best work, perhaps Corazon de Niño, is unlikely to tempt the classical musician.

It is as a performer that di Blasio has made his mark and the reasons for that are evident in today's video. He has a remarkable capability to bring emotional shape to music as demonstrated in his fluid and idiosyncratic version of Adios Nonino. Surely this arrangement was born during those 12 hour practice days in Buenos Aires. This video was made nearly twenty years ago and di Blasio has adopted a somewhat more austere style as evidenced in his most recent release, Primavera, but the flourishes and ornamentation which are rampant in the video still emerge as part of the emotional appeal of his music today.

So, until Yanni discovers Libertango, we have a way to tell the two men apart. If today's video does not appear below, click here.



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Saturday, May 7, 2011

See The Light - Verano Porteño

Sometimes it's puppies, sometimes it's an old man smoking a pipe but usually it is paintings of tango dancers or holiday photographs of Buenos Aires. I am talking about the visuals that accompany Piazzolla's music in the 30% of YouTube Piazzolla videos which do not include live musicians. There were roughly 4,300 such videos in the past two years and essentially all of them were ignored by this blog which is focused on live performances. But every once a while, such a video is so striking that it wins a place in this blog. Such is the case for today's video which includes the music of Verano Porteño and the visuals of a custom animation.

The video is titled See the Light. There have been other custom animations on YouTube utilizing Piazzolla's music but this is by far the most imaginative in concept and the most professional in execution of any I have seen. The art work is surrealistic and tells a story rather than appearing to be an scholarly exercise or an experiment. The music complements the art in a way that makes it almost seem like the music was composed for the animation rather than the opposite. The creator of this animation deserves credit and recognition but the only information about the video is in the Korean credits at the end of the video and my Korean friends are, at the moment, unavailable. The only name appearing in western orthography is Lee su Hyeon and the logo of Chosun University appears at the end. It is tempting to speculate that the work is the product of students at Chosun University led by Lee su Hyeon but, rather than speculate, I am hoping that some reader of this blog will provide more information in the form of a comment below.

The YouTube music copyright recognition software has credited the music to Raul Garello's CD, Dancing Tango, but after listening to samples of the cited tune, I am not fully convinced the software has properly identified the source.

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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cafe 1930 - Sureste Trio

Authentic has often been used in this blog as a synonym for "good" with respect to Piazzolla's music. Today's video of Cafe 1930 by Germany's Sureste Trio is not authentic but it is unquestionably good, in fact, very good. The authentic version of Cafe 1930 was composed for flute and guitar - it is played by Sureste on clarinet, guitar and contrabass. The authentic depicts tango music as it might have been heard in a San Telmo cafe in 1930 - Sureste retains some hints of tango but adds a bit of swing, a touch of gypsy and a touch of klezmer. The cafe feels more Barcelona or Paris or Berlin than San Telmo.

That this is something different is tipped off by the guitar introduction which moves quickly from flamenco to jazz to bossa nova before the familiar descending notes of Piazzolla's opening arrive. The introduction is the creation of Angel Garcia Arnès, the guitarist and arranger for Sureste. All the musicians in Sureste are good but the guitar work of Arnès is simply superb - deft, clean, flowing, creative. Among the best I have heard. The clarinet covers the flute part - it doesn't just play the flute part, it recaptures it in a clarinet appropriate way. The klezmer touch and swing of clarinetist, Witek Kornacki, is very reminiscent of another clarinetist famed for his interpretations of Piazzolla, Giora Feidman. The work of bassist, Guido Jäger, is pitch perfect, understated and absolutely necessary to the tight sound of this trio. If you enjoy the interlude between Arnès and Jäger at the four minute mark of today's video, then you will really enjoy the duet they provide in their video of Contrabajeando. The virtuosity of these two musicians is quite apparent in that video.

There is also a YouTube video featuring the trio playing Piazzolla's Meditango. The meditative part of this piece which begins around 3'35" into that video has never been played better. Far too many musicians never recognize the essence of the work at that point - Arnès feels the music. And if you want more of the Sureste Trio, I strongly encourage you to buy their CD, Soledad.

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ausencias - Donal Fox Quartet

Donal Fox is a composer, a jazz pianist and a professor at MIT. His interest in the music of Piazzolla has been discussed earlier in this blog in connection with his Piazzolla to Bach project. Today's video features a brand new arrangement of Ausencias by Fox and his quartet. The performance is at Sculler's Jazz Club in Boston and the notes indicate that it is his first public performance of the work. I believe the performance was yesterday, May 2.

Ausencias was composed by Piazzolla in 1984 for the Fernando Solanas movie, L'Exil de Gardel. In 1985, the score for the movie was awarded a César - the national film award of France. It is a mellow work and contains a sublime duet between electric guitar and bandoneón. Piazzolla's performance of the work can be found on the CD, Tanguedia de Amor.

Three-fourths of the Donal Fox Quartet performance met my expectations. Bass player, Professor John Lockwood, lays down a rock solid clave and root progression. Fox's piano and Warren Wolf's vibraphone have a quiet conversation that captures much of the elegance of the bandoneón/guitar duet in the original (Wolf gets a pass for his one quickly stopped clam - it was, after all, the first performance). But the work of the fourth member of the quartet, Dafnis Prieto on drums, is horrible. Perhaps, Prieto, like a dog who hears frequencies above human hearing, hears complex poly-rhythms that are outside of most human's hearings or perhaps he is just hunting for the right groove and never finds it. But, the result is an apparently random laying on of various drums and cymbals that destroys the flow and integrity of the piece. Next time, give the man a brush and one drum or ask him to sit out the piece. I would be very interested to hear what Fox's other drummers, Terri Lyne Carrington or Yoron Israel, would do with the work. There is potential here, but until the drum work is fixed, the piece should go back to the practice studio.

Donal Fox fans should be aware that next week on May 10, there is an important New York premier of his work, Hear De Lambs A-Cryin, at Carnegie Hall. I believe there will be a live web broadcast.

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Monday, May 2, 2011

Lo Que Vendrá

Will the real Lo que vendrá please stand up? Today's video, a bandoneón solo version of the piece played by Damián Foretic is certainly not the real one although it is lovely. The quality of the videography is excellent (see a bandoneón up close), the quality of the sound is excellent, and Mr. Foretic is a good bandoneónist who plays with feeling and musicality. But we know it is not the real Lo que vendrá - it is an arrangement for solo bandoneón by Néstor Marconi. You can see and hear Mr. Marconi play it himself here. Many bandoneónist play this arrangement. No one, including Mr. Foretic, play it remotely as well as Marconi.

Lo que vendrá was composed in the mid-50's, quite probably in Paris while Piazzolla was studying with Nadia Boulanger. When Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires from Paris, he organized the Octeto Buenos Aires and in 1956, they recorded their first LP, Tango Progresivo. In that recording, Piazzolla showed Argentina for the first time, his ideas on "new" tango. The record contained six tracks - five were Piazzolla's "new" arrangements of classical tangos by other other composers and one was his new composition, Lo que vendrá. It is clear that the outline of a nice piece of music is there but to my ears, this version of Lo que vendrá is hesitant and confused. It is a little classical, a little orquesta típica, a little jazz and a little "new" tango. You can hear this first recording of the piece here. It is the first Lo que vendrá but is it the real Lo que vendrá?

The work was apparently a favorite of Piazzolla. In the next five years he recorded it five more times and each time, it was a little more coherent and different. In 1958, he used the piece as the main theme in the sound track for the movie, Dos basuras. According to the Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, at a lecture in October, 1961, Piazzolla played a recording of Lo que vendrá to demonstrate the "new" tango. The last time he recorded it was in 1963, for the LP, Tango Contemporaneo. As in the original recording, this one again was made by an octet, the Nuevo Octeto. This version can also be heard here on YouTube. Perhaps this is the real Lo que vendrá. It retains the classical sounding violin solo but now takes almost entirely the form of tango nuevo.

The story could be conveniently ended there but Le Grand Tango has one more interesting observation. Lo que vendrá had enough orqesta típica style in it to attract Piazzolla's earlier boss and mentor, Anibal Troilo. Troilo recorded his own version, which you can hear here. In 1961, Piazzolla and Troilo appeared together on Channel 11 in Buenos Aires and Troilo invited Piazzolla to join him in playing Lo que vendrá. If video of that program still exists, it is in it, perhaps, that we will find the real Lo que vendrá.

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