Astor Piazzolla
For
sheet music by Astor Piazzolla click here
Biography and albums - Tango: Zero Hour,
La Camorra
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was a composer and bandoneón
player who revolutionized tango music. In 1924 Piazzolla's family moved
from Buenos Aires to New York City - Astor was only three years old. They
stayed there, with a brief interlude, until 1936. He listened to Cab Calloway
in Harlem. Later, again in Buenos Aires, he played traditional
tango on his
bandoneón in Aníbal Troilo's orchestra. In 1940 he
composed a piece for Arthur Rubinstein who was in Buenos Aires on a tour.
Rubinstein recognized Piazzolla's talent and told him to take lessons in
composing with Alberto Ginastera - and that is what he did. With Ginastera he
listened a lot to Bartók and Stravinsky. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilo - the
tango scene considered this to be ingratitude and treason - but the 25-year old went
his own way and created his own group. He introduced counterpoints, fugues and new
harmonies into tango music. But it took Piazzolla up to the 1980s to become
recognized in his homeland of Argentina. I had the chance to see him towards
the end of his life in a memorable concert at Geneva's Victoria Hall. He
suffered a brain haemorrhage in Paris which he never recovered from and he died in Bueno
Aires in 1992.
La Camarro is an album recorded in 1988 in New York City - by the
way, a camorra is a quarrel. Soledad is a harmonious, tonal
ballad. La Camorra I is more like a traditional tango. La Fugata
is some sort of chamber music. Sur: Los Suenõs and Sur: Regreso Al
Amor are emotional, passionate compositions. The CD Tango: Zero Hour
is more radical. It is an album which challenges traditional listening habits.
This is no dancing music like traditional tango, no easy listening music, but
as Piazzolla put it himself: This is "... the greatest record I've made in
my entire life. We gave our souls to [it]. This is the record I can give to my
grandchildren an say, 'This is what we did with our lives'." La Hora
Zero was recorded in New York City in 1986 with Piazzolla's famous New
Tango Quintet. Tango: Zero Hour is still avant-garde, as its title says,
a reinvention of a music as if it had not existed before.
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Get the album Tango:
Zero Hour from Amazon.de,
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.com.
Get the album La Camorra
from Amazon.com
or
Amazon.de.
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