Cancionrs DE Tango

Bajofondo, formerly known as Bajofondo Tango Club, is an Argentine-Uruguayan tango fusion collective led by Grammy-winning producer Gustavo Santaolalla. In general, the collective fuses acoustic tango with electronic music, resulting in a contemporary style representative of the Rio de la Plata music scene in the 21st century. Led by Santaolalla (guitar, percussion, vocals), whose production credits include such luminous Latin acts as Juanes, Café Tacuba, and Julieta Venegas, Bajofondo is also comprised of Juan Campodónico (programming, beats, samples, guitar), Luciano Supervielle (piano, keyboards, scratching), Javier Casalla (violin), Martín Ferrés (bandoneon), Gabriel Casacuberta (upright bass, electric bass), Adrián Sosa (drums), and Verónica Loza (VJ, vocals). They made their full-length album debut in 2002 with Bajofondo Tango Club on Santaolalla's Universal Music-affiliated boutique label, Surco Records. Subsequent albums include Bajofondo Tango Club Presenta: Supervielle (2004), Remixed (2006), and Mar Dulce (2007), the latter featuring an all-star list of guest features (most notably Gustavo Cerati, Nelly Furtado, Mala Rodríguez, Juan Subirá [of Bersuit Vergarabat], Elvis Costello.). In addition to their album releases, Bajofondo also releases club-oriented 12" EPs and tours internationally.

From the moment Karen Gomyo first heard Astor Piazzolla on disc, at the age of fourteen, she was spellbound: ‘I had never heard such a combination of sensuality, fierceness, playfulness, sadness and nostalgia.’ As a violinist she found the role of the violin in Piazzolla’s music especially inspiring, and soon started playing it herself – first in various group combinations, and eventually together with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist Pablo Ziegler and his Tango Quartet. For the present disc she has chosen to record strings-only versions of three works originally for tango quintet (Seasons), guitar and flute (Histoire), and solo flute (Études).

It is a meaningful sign of the times that Astor Piazzolla is arguably one of the most frequently performed composers on the contemporary musical stage, even though he probably never aimed at writing “classical” music. True, one of the fundamental encounters of his life was with composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, who mentored many of the most important avant-garde musicians of the second half of the twentieth century. And, under her guidance, Piazzolla did attempt to express his personality through the language of Western contemporary music. The results, of course, were very good, since nobody could question Piazzolla’s talent. Yet, when Piazzolla performed one of the tangos he had already written to his professor, she exclaimed: “Astor, all your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla sound is here, never leave it behind!”. And if the language of Piazzolla’s music does not correspond to that of the coeval European avantgardes, neither does it conform to the standards of the Argentinian tango tradition. It is precisely for his utter originality that Astor Piazzolla rightfully claimed and obtained a place in the pantheon of twentieth-century classical music. But it is also this originality that may puzzle those attempting to classify him within one of the established musical categories.

A rendition of a tango operita, commissioned by the Argentinian Ministry of Culture (this rendition anyway), was revived by violinist Gidon Kremer, who had such a love for the original LPs from Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer that he wanted to recreate the music. Ferrer was kept on as El Duende (the Goblin) – the role that he created when he wrote the libretto thirty years earlier. Regrettably, Piazzolla had passed on prior to the remake. Nonetheless, the arrangements and orchestrations are remarkable. The suffering and the passion of Maria (the main character in the show) are perfectly portrayed by the tango. The music changes forms as her character progresses, taking on traditional tangos, modern tangos, milongas, waltzes, and other styles to reflect changes in Maria. The music is always well-composed. This is an opera for the display of modern music, and the tango of Piazzolla is modern music at its finest.