Chiquilín de Bachín - Amelita Baltar

Piazzolla wrote the music, Horacio Ferrer wrote the lyrics but it wasn't a canción until Amelita Baltar sang it. The three were inseparable for a while during the creation and premiere of the operita Maria de Buenos Aires and they often dined together at a traditional porteño restaurant, Bachin. Inspired by the presence of a young boy selling roses at the Bachin, Piazzolla wrote one of his few waltzes and Ferrer found just the right poetry to capture the poignancy of the situation to create Chiquilín de Bachín. Amelita recorded it in 1969 on a 1969 Trova LP (TS 33-741). That version is difficult to find but a second version, recorded the same year, is available on the CD, Amelita Baltar Interpreta Piazzolla y Ferrer.

Amelita Baltar and Piazzolla were together for seven years, 1968-1975, and those years included the most productive period of collaboration with Ferrer (there was a second short period of collaboration in 1981, with Jairo turning their efforts into canción). Baltar has had a long and successful career as a singer and fortunately has continued to give the works of Piazzolla and Ferrer a prominent position in her repertoire. You will find many of her performances of their works on YouTube but today's featured video is new to YouTube and presents her singing Chiquilín de Bachín on an undated Argentine television production.

She sings the song as if she owns it and, in a sense, she does. She was certainly there at its birth.

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