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ASTOR PIAZZOLLA - Essential Tango (2CD)



Two CDs that celebrate the genius of Piazzolla's 'tango nuevo' revolution. 'It's totally amazing how this guy wrote so many incredible melodies ... He's like Gershwin was for jazz' Philippe Cohen Solal of the Gotan Project


Astor Piazzolla was one of the greatest figures in 20th century music ­ a spectacularly prolific artist, whose career revolutionised and universalised Argentinean tango. So it¹s ironic that the man whose music most strongly evokes the spirit of Argentina should have only gained full recognition and respect in his home country in the last few years of his life. Until late in his career, he was always more popular in places like Brazil and France and it wasn¹t until 1985 that he was honoured with the title of 'Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires'. To many Argentineans, what he did to tango was unforgivable.

What they saw as tango's golden age was in Piazzolla¹s eyes a moribund, formulaic dance music in its twilight years. In a career that stretched from the late 1930s to 1990, (and really went into overdrive from the end of the 1950s) he performed a dizzying intellectual and emotional makeover of tango which introduced elements of jazz and classical music and transformed it into a music for the ears ­ as well as the soul ­ rather than just the feet, while still retaining its melancholic, lyrical essence.

Piazzolla's son Daniel described him as 'a work machine' and it¹s estimated that he wrote over 3,000 pieces. Who knows how many others he simply gave away or burnt, as he is reported to have done several times? There are accounts of him delaying the presentation of commissioned work for a time after completing it simply because the speed at which he produced it might lead clients to wonder if it wasn't something he¹d prepared earlier. His endless capacity for experimentation expressed itself in many different formats and forms. Piazzolla¹s groups ranged from quintets to nonets, including two radical electronic octets in the late '70s ­ a whole three decades before the term 'electrotango' was coined. His experiments didn¹t always work out, but he was forever pushing the envelope, more often than not with sensational results.

The tracks on this compilation are drawn from live and studio recordings made in the 1970s and 1980s, by which time he was firmly established as an international artist. Some were written earlier and remained staples of his repertoire; others were late compositions, which showed his fiery creativity to be undiminished.

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA - Essential Tango is available through Union Square, and distributed by Creative Vibes

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