Tango Nuevo Revisited

Various Artists - Magic Moments 12CD / digitalOne World Of Music. The ACT label has jazz at its core, and an openness to all kinds of musical directions: pop, rock, the music of singer-songwriters and traditional folkloric forms such as flamenco and tango. These very different genres nonetheless never fail to find new and magical ways to work together. The twelfth Magic Moments compilation presents exciting music "in the Spirit of Jazz". All kinds of pleasure await the listener during its 71 minutes. And what can one expect to hear in this world so far away from a single predetermined style? There are surprises, obviously. Plus several chances to reconnect with established and familiar stars. And discoveries of some genuinely exciting newcomers. The opening track is from Iiro Rantala on solo piano. His portrait of the month of "August" is from "My Finnish Calendar", an album which sets to music the course of an entire year in his home country from a very personal point of view. Argentinian tango is a prime example of a musical tradition which is not just lively but is also constantly developing. The Javier Girotto Trio proves the point in "Deus Xango" from "Tango Nuevo Revisited", a contemporary reimagining of the Piazzolla/Mulligan classic album from 1975. "Four top-league jazz musicians who just enjoy playing". That description by the TV programme ZDF today Journal) defines exactly what "4WD" is all about. The four bandleaders involved are Nils Landgren, Mi-chael Wollny, Lars Danielsson and Wolfgang Haffner). Each of them is in equal control and they all set the direction of the group. "Flamenco and jazz are brothers," says Spanish piano newcomer Daniel García. In his energetic trio with special guest Jorge Pardo, he shows just how true that statement is with the fiery "Travesuras". French accordionist Vincent Peirani and his wife Serena Fisseau then create a familiar musical refuge: "What A Wonderful World" is a paean to silence. A duo of newcomers to the label, Grégoire Maret and Edmar Castaneda create new and exciting sound worlds. In "Harp vs. Harp" harmonica meets harp. This is indeed a special and rare pairing; "Blueserinho" absolutely needs to be heard. With his "Italian Songbook" trumpeter Luca Aquino has recorded a homage to the music of his homeland. Here is "Scalinatella" by film composer Giuseppe Cioffi in an affecting version for trio with the Italian piano star Danilo Rea and accordionist Natalino Marchetti. Singer Cæcilie Norby unites musicians from several generations and countries on "Sisters in Jazz". Her composition "Naked In The Dark" demonstrates that jazz is far from being only about men. "Klinken" comes from the debut album "Stax" by the 25-year-old drummer Max Stadtfeld, a release in the Young German Jazz series. Stadtfeld and his comrades-in-arms have no truck with intellectuality, they move in the rhythm-oriented mainstream and yet point beyond it. With freshness and astonishing maturity this quartet thrills and excites. For over 10 years the successful trio Mare Nostrum with Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano and Jan Lundgren has been the epitome of the sound of Europe. All three musi-cians have a quite fabulous sense of the lyrical and poetic which is again very much to the fore in their third album; Magic Moments 12 has the Swedish "Ronneby". As the magazine Galore writes of German jazz icon Joachim Kühn. “He interprets Ornette Coleman's music in his very own way: lyrically, gently and introvertedly, but full of surprising details." Kühn relives the unique story of his work alongside one of the legends of jazz here with "Lost Thoughts", a piece never recorded before. On 6 February 2019, jazz baroness Pannonica (Nica) de Koenigswarter (1913-1988) received a posthumous tribute for her tireless commitment to jazz in a concert at the Philharmonie in Berlin. The focus was on pieces by musicians whom Pannonica had supported over so many years with money, accommodation, advice and friendship, and who often dedicated compositions to her in gratitude, "Little Butterly" by Thelonious Monk for example. The New York singer Charenée Wade is in the limelight here, accompanied by Iiro Rantala, Dan Berglund and Anton Eger, with the American saxophone titan Ernie Watts. "An Israeli power trio. Heavy Jazz," Rolling Stone wrote of Shalosh. And when you hear the frenzied "After The War" it is obvious why: rock and indie jazz combine to form a mix which is full of tension and excitement. Violinist Adam Baldych is a supremely talented virtuoso. Stereo Magazine has described him as "one of the most technically brilliant interpreters of improvised music". "Longing" from his album "Sacrum Profanum" is a searingly sad ballad, sensitively interpreted in a duo with pianist Krzysztof Dys. On "Painted Music" the pianist Carsten Dahl gives his own highly personal take on classics of the jazz repertoire. The traditional Danish folk song "Jeg gik mig ud en sommerdag" (I went out on a summer’s day) is the sound of summer. At the end of “Magic Moments 12”, Nguyên Lê's piece "Hippocampus" reminds us of "One World Of Music", the theme of the compilation. The French guitarist of Vietnamese ancestry is a musical wayfarer between cultures who combines the freedom of jazz with influences from rock and world music.Credits: Compilation by Siggi Loch Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann

Javier Girotto Trio - Tango Nuevo RevistedCD / digital Javier Girotto baritone saxophone & leader Gianni Iorio bandoneon Alessandro Gwis piano & electronics Argentinian tango, just like jazz, is a classic example of a living, constantly developing musical tradition. Already, when it was in its early stages in around 1900, it combined influences from European, African and Latin American music. And today, more than 100 years later, it is as vital as ever, not only in its traditional form and but also incorporating elements from pop, electronica and jazz. There can be no musician in recent times as important in this process of the tango evolving and opening up as the Argentinian bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla. He was a pioneer and direction-setter, and one of his key works was the album "Tango Nuevo" (also known as "Summit"), recorded in 1974 with the American baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. It was a global success, and it made this form of the tango, known by the same name as the album, popular far beyond the borders of Argentina.Siggi Loch played a leading role in making "Tango Nuevo”' popular: the recording was released on Atlantic Records in Europe under his supervision in 1975, and quickly developed into a great success far beyond tango and jazz circles. 40 years later, Loch travelled through Argentina in search of new music and inspiration, and the journey brought him back to his a long-cherished desire to produce a response to “Tango Nuevo”, an album which has remained personally significant for him. Not long after that, when Loch had returned to Europe, trumpeter Paolo Fresu drew his attention to Javier Girotto, a saxophonist from Argentina who lives in Italy. Girotto was born in Córdoba, Argentina, spent his youth playing in tango orchestras and jazz bands, and then went to Boston, where he studied jazz at the Berklee College of Music. Thereafter, he travelled to Italy, his grandparents’ native country, and, once there, made the decision to move his centre of life permanently to Rome, a place which, in his view, has many parallels to his Argentine homeland. Girotto had first discovered the album "Tango Nuevo" as a ten year old in Argentina. It was a key experience in his life, and it stayed with him because it united the two worlds of his own creativity – Argentinian tango and American jazz. Surprisingly, Girotto had never played the music of the album himself before, not least because he had built up an enormous repertoire as a composer, with over 500 pieces and almost 40 albums to his name. However, once he was offered the challenge of giving a personal take on these familiar pieces, and to give today's audience the opportunity to hear them again in concert, he found that it really appealed to him. Thus "Tango Nuevo Reloaded", Javier Girotto’s debut on the ACT label, is what might be described as a chamber jazz version of the original, which had extended orchestral and band episodes. Together with his Italian fellow musicians and close friends Gianni Iorio (bandoneon) and Alessandro Gwis (piano, keyboards), Girotto goes straight to the heart of these pieces and their melodies. The trio's interpretations often sound more jazz-inspired than the original, which had the softer hues of pop-jazz. Furthermore, Girotto himself occasionally makes the baritone saxophone honk and roar rather more than Mulligan did, but he definitely comes into his own in the more tender and lyrical passages as well. In tango, just as in jazz, there is no place for dogmatic purity – and there never has been. Each of the musical genres consists of a vocabulary which serves as a palette for expression. Tango and jazz provide contexts for artists to exchange ideas and to tell musical stories. And that is what "Tango Nuevo Reloaded" is all about.Credits: Recorded by Stefano Quarta at Forward Studios, Grottaferrata (Rome), 14.& 15. 09. 2018 Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann Produced by Siggi Loch Cover art by Mimmo Paladino