Live from Moscow

"And in Piazzolla's music we find everything we seek in any kind of music - the rhythm of heartbeat and vibration of human soul: ecstasy and devastation, happiness and yearning, dreams and despair. It seems to be a fused reflection of our present day reality."

That quote directly from the website of Moscow's Piazzolla Quintet says a lot but to hear it all you need to listen to their music. Their arrangements are fresh - not duplicates of Piazzolla's originals but very true to the original intent. Instrumentation is not identical to Piazzolla's original - a vibraphone replaces the guitar and, in these videos, an accordion replaces the bandoneón. The performances are crisp and nuanced - among the best I have heard. Members of the group are all classically trained musicians who have overcome that handicap and include Mikhail Khokhlov (piano), Mario Durand (violin, vocal), Yuri Medianik (accordion), Andrey Doynikov (vibraphone) and Mikhail Khokhlov (double-bass). All have a connection with Gnessin Musical College - a center for musical training in Moscow since 1895.

The group posted twelve videos from a November, 2009 performance in Moscow's Orchestrion Hall. If you are snowed in like I am today, there is no better way to spend an hour than to watch all of them. I chose to feature Concierto para Quinteto just because it appears to be the opening piece of the concert - you can find the others on their YouTube channel. For a bit of surprise, watch their Se potessi ancora. This is a lovely but rarely heard Piazzolla canción and it's even rarer to hear it sung (very well) by the violinist.

The group has recorded several albums but they are difficult to find. Fortunately, they have also generously posted quite a few mp3's for download on their website.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

Summit Suite

It is not big band jazz but perhaps it is big orchestra jazz. Certainly it is a new orchestral approach to one of Piazzolla's landmark collaborations - that with baritone sax legend, the late Gerry Mulligan. That collaboration led to one of Piazzolla's best selling albums, Summit, released in 1974. Orchestral approaches to some of the music from that album are not unknown, but arranger Hans-Peter Preu has created a suite of tunes for bandoneón, baritone sax and orchestra which retain much of the feel of the original. Other orchestral arrangements have tried to confine Summit to fit into the space recognized as classical music. Preu has really arranged these for an orchestra which is willing to unbutton a bit and celebrate the jazz spirit of the music.

The Suite is spread over five videos - I have chosen to feature the performance of the title tune, Summit, but they are all interesting. Although not identified in the video, I believe the orchestra is the Mittelsächsische Philharmonie. That orchestra is led by Jan Michael Horstmann and the baritone sax soloist in the videos, Anja Bachmann, is a member of that orchestra. Ms. Bachmann and Preu have collaborated before on a similar saxophone/jazz orchestra work titled New York Jazz Suite so I suspect Ms. Bachmann is the driving force behind these arrangement. She is joined in the performance by other soloists Michael Dolak on bandoneón, Holger Miersch on piano, and Tino Scholz on bass. I might quibble with Horstmann's pace and emphasis in some parts of the suite but taken in total, this is quite a nice performance by all involved.

If you enjoy Summit, you might want to watch the other parts of the suite: Years of solitude, Deus Xango, Close your eyes and listen, and Twenty Years Later. As a bonus, the four soloist join to perform a very nice version of Escualo in the same concert, this time Ms. Bachmann is on clarinet. If you are impressed by the bandoneón and bass work, I suggest you watch this video of Cuarteto Rotterdam - you will see both Dolak and Scholz as part of one of the best and most authentic tango quartets in Europe. You can further enjoy the music of the Cuarteto Rotterdam through their two CD's, Yunta De Oro (2007) and Deleitante (2009), which are available on their website or through iTunes.

My thanks to Hans-Peter Preu. He has made an important contribution to the Piazzolla orchestral repertoire. I hope other orchestras take notice. If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

January 2010 Review of Piazzolla Videos

There were 510 videos of Piazzolla’s music posted on YouTube in the month of January, 2010. 381 (75%) 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.

Forty-six percent of the performance videos were in the classical mode, 21% in Nuevo tango, 19% in pop and 14% in jazz.

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. Histoire du tango – Café 1930
5. Invierno Porteño
6. Histoire du tango – Bordel 1900
7. Histoire du tango – Nightclub 1960
8. La Muerte del ángel
9. Milonga del ángel
10. Primavera Porteña

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

The performance videos came from 54 different countries. Italy posted the most videos: 62. The top ten posting countries are listed in order here:

1. Italy
2. USA
3. Argentina
4. Spain
5. Russia
6. Brazil
7. France
8. Canada
9. Mexico
10. Ukraine, Romania (tie)

There were fifteen Piazzolla original performances posted. Eight of these were new to YouTube: Three movements of Concierto para bandoneon y orchesta, three movements of Suite Punta del Este, an interview which preceded those two performances, and a short television feature which contains some new video. The others have been previously posted.

Quality of performance varied from excellent to bizarre. My choice for best of the month is the performance by guitarist Alberto Morelli of Buenos Aires Hora Cero.

The choice for most bizarre this month is a video of a flamenco dancer performing to a medley of Piazzolla tunes played (and played well) on an electric bass guitar.

I have put a table with links to all 510 videos as well as some more information on the videos on the January, 2010 link in my Piazzolla on Video website.

Two for Mañana

There were two strong candidates for the January "Best of the Month" award. This blog negligently passed over them as January flew by. These are too good to miss and it is still early in February, so here the are.

The first is a performance by former Piazzolla quintet pianist, Pablo Ziegler in a chamber quintet of his own choosing performing his arrangement of Libertango at the Miami International Piano Festival. Members of the quintet included Alexis Cardenas on violin, Jisso Ok on cello, Pedro Giraudo on double bass and Hector del Curto on bandoneón. Hector del Curto has joined Ziegler on many stages over many years but Giraudo and Ok are relatively new to his music; to my knowledge, this is Cardenas' first appearance with Ziegler - a good addition. The arrangement is focused very much on Zieglers awesome piano talent although both Cardenas and del Curto get a chance to show some improvisational skills. Ok seemed a little awed by the talent around her and was glued to her sheet music while the others improvised but added some class to the group. Ziegler is one of the few performers who have moved Piazzolla's music into the jazz world while retaining the genetic component of canyengue that makes the music special. The audience in Miami got a real treat with this perfomance (and they got good reviews)

The second video strikes quite a different mood. It takes one of Piazzolla's signature quintet works, Buenos Aires Hora Cero, and transforms into a mesmerizing guitar solo. The arrangement and performance is by Alberto Morelli. I have found essentially no information about Mr. Morelli other than hints that he teaches classical guitar at La Escuela Superior de las Bellas Artes in Mazatlán, Mexico. You will also find performances by Morelli on YouTube of Libertango and La muerte del angel. The performances in these videos are good but the perfect integration of the foreboding E-F#-G-F#-E-etc ground with the darting melodic interludes and sound effects shows a mastery of musical engineering on the guitar which makes Morelli's interpretation of Hora Cero great. You won't find a better guitar interpretation. Bravo!

Which one gets "Best of Month?" It's too difficult, I'll decide mañana.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for Ziegler and click here for Morelli.





To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

One Year

Today marks the first anniversary of this blog. Two hundred and forty-six blog entries and more than 250 videos featuring the music of Astor Piazzolla have been shared. The sitemeter indicates there have been 13,175 page views over that year. That's a decent start.

If you are a regular reader, thanks for returning so often.

To celebrate the new blog year, I repeat the video that started it all. If that video does not appear below, please click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

Cracow Guitar Quartet

There are only a few great guitar quartets - Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and the Sante Fe Guitar Quartet come to mind. After viewing today's featured video of Libertango, I would add the Cracow Guitar Quartet to that short list. The challenge to such quartets is precision and balance. There are a lot of fingers which need to be coordinated and very little ability to signal intent. It almost requires extrasensory perception (or a lot of practice) to be perfectly synchronized as this Cracow group is. The problem of balance is also a challenge - many groups have one or two dominant players which ultimately leads to solos with accompaniment, not true quartet music. No problem with that in Cracow, these musicians are all equally superb. This is a group which transcends their local roots and deserves more international exposure.

The quartet consists of Jadwiga Wołek, Joanna Baran, Łukasz Dobrowolski, and Oskar Kozłowski. This is a young group just getting started. They have no recordings yet but they have posted a number of pieces from their repertoire on their website. You can also find several more videos of their performances on their YouTube channel. In 2009, the group's excellence was recognized with the first prize award at the 12th International Guitar Competition in Ile De Ré in France. Based on the performance in this video, it was well deserved.

I hope we will hear more from this young quartet in the future. If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

Dance Inspiration

Play the word association game with "tango" and the response will almost always be "dance." When Piazzolla entered the musical world, he wrote music to which tango was danced. But as his compositional skills increased through his studies with Alberto Ginastera, his arrangements of tango music progressed to the point where they confused dancers. The Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, reports of an occasion where dancer hearing his arrangement of the vintage tango Inspiración, " .. froze. Some moved closer to the band to listen. Others simply left." When he began composing in the nuevo tango style, dancers rejected the music as undanceable. Piazzolla had separated "tango" from "dance."

How times have changed. Today, Piazzolla's music inspires many to dance and we have three interesting improvisational dance videos featured today. All the dancers are remarkably uninhibited. All make me smile. With no better organizing principle available, they are arranged by age of dancer.

First we have young Luis Henrique, the most energetic of the dancers, dancing to a Piazzolla arrangement of the vintage tango, Malena. Second, two very expressive Japanese dancers, whose names Google translates as Ugazin and Kako, dancing to Libertango played by the group Ensemble Green. And finally, an unnamed dancer dancing, again to Libertango, in a most unlikely location: the grounds of the private residence of the assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana. In 2008, that residence which is located in Kanombe, a suburb of the capital, Kigali, was converted into a museum in commemoration of the Rwandese genocide, the Rwandese culture and the Second Republic. There must be a story behind this dance and I hope some reader of this blog will eventually share it with us.

If the videos do not appear below, click here for Luis Henrique, here for Ugazin and Kako, and here for the dance from Rwanda.







To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.