Birdland, the legendary New York City jazz club, was born on Broadway in 1949 and supposedly named after its first headline performer, Charlie "Bird" Parker. Rock-and-roll killed Birdland in 1965, but like the phoenix, it reappeared in a new uptown location in 1986 and in 1996, it returned to Broadway where it has been headlining the best jazz has to offer ever since. Today's video captures one of today's best, Pablo Ziegler and his quartet, in a performance of Libertango last week on July 15 at Birdland. Birdland has the usual "no video" rule but some fan ignored the rule until he was caught and the video was ended before the song was ended. I suggest you watch the video now before the true owners of the performance have it removed from YouTube.
Pablo Ziegler is no stranger to readers of this blog. He was the pianist in Piazzolla's second quintet. He is a fine composer on his own part but has continued to perform much of Piazzolla's work in his own heavily jazz tinged style. This blog has recently covered Ziegler in performances with Branford Marsalis and with Regina Carter but in both of those performances, Ziegler accepted some compromise in his style to accommodate his headliner sidemen. There is no need for that in today's video - we get pure Ziegler and his quartet. Members of the quartet are not identified in the video but I believe they are Hector Del Curto on bandoneón, Pedro Giraudo on contrabass and Jisoo Ok on cello. Libertango has become so widely played (and abused) that I know some Piazzolla fans refuse to listen to it anymore but this one deserves your time.
Ziegler did have a guest star that evening: Argentine vocalist, Sandra Luna. You can view a bit of Ms. Luna's performance in this bootleg video from the same concert.
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