Argentina: Part II

It's not a very good sign when every other post on this blog begins with something like: after a long unannounced hiatus, Type and Tonic is back and better than ever. Granted this hiatus was announced—I was in the U.S. for the last three weeks—but if I'm going to keep this blog up, I need to be significantly more prolific. A limited output may be a virtue in film directors (see: Kubrik vs. Woody Allen), but it certainly isn't in bloggers.

I also need to get this back up and running because now I'm really out on my own as a writer. I've left the Argentimes editorial team and am hoping to strike out a path as a freelancer, jazz columnist, and amateur pugilist. (The pugilism is by far the most promising at this point.)

My web presence has expanded since last I was in Argentina. Through The Tube, a new website by the graphic designer Joshua Goldfein, is posting a lot of content that originally ran in the Argentimes. My articles currently on his site are a travel piece on El Chalten, and a news analysis/interview on corruption in Argentina. There's word that my Nazi hunting story will run on the site in the near future.

Through The Tube is a very polished site and is a major boon to the Argentimes. Finally, you'll be able to access our articles online without downloading an entire PDF of the paper.

I've also taken on a new job as Argentina columnist for the web's biggest jazz site: All About Jazz. My first article, a review of the Charles Lloyd Quartet's San Francisco concert, has been submitted, and should go up next week. My column will start soon, with an introductory summary of jazz in Buenos Aires to be followed by a string of articles on tango-jazz and folkloric-jazz in Argentina.

As a final note, I've just bought Brad Mehldau's new double album, Brad Mehldau Trio (Live), and I'd recommend that if you have an inclination for the jazz piano, you do the same. Carla Mazzio, a U of C English professor, once told me that the font size of a title was inversely proportional to the quality of the work. In Mehldau's case, there must be an inverse relationship between quality of title and quality of playing.

BMT (Live) is sensational. I'd begun to lose some faith in my favorite jazz pianist after a string of fairly ho-hum studio recordings. This is his best album since Art of the Trio, Vol. 4: Back at the Vanguard, and may be his strongest recording to date.

Beyond showing that Mehldau is still at the top of his game, this album raises the question: should Brad Mehldau ever enter a recording studio again? His live albums are so much richer than what he does in the studio—the extended form of live performance documents his tightly-controlled virtuosity in a way that has never really come across in the studio. Removed from the tightrope sprint of live performance, he tends to sound disappointingly restrained.

Take it as a sign of my enthusiasm that I bought not only the album, but also the complete recording of the Friday night sets (over three hours of music) from the Nonesuch website.