On Friday, I spent an hour with Dino Saluzzi and his son, José, talking about musical education, improvisation, and the future of Argentine music. (For those who aren't up on their tango-folkloric-jazz fusion, Dino Saluzzi is the world's reigning bandoneon master and probably second only to Ástor Piazzolla in his influence on the course of Argentine creative music.) Dino and José were generous and insightful. My interview with them should be up on All About Jazz sometime in May.
Yesterday, I spent part of my afternoon with Pipi Piazzolla, the grandson of the aforementioned Ástor and a top-notch musician in his own right. Pipi is the drummer and leader of Escalandrum, one of Argentina's most decorated and prolific jazz groups. They have a dark tango texture amidst some really sharp, rhythmically complex jazz playing.
The band's name, Escalandrum, does not come, as I had thought, from some conjunction of Escala (scale in Spanish) and drum, but rather from a conjunction of escalandrún and drum. What's an escalandrún, you ask? Why, it's the Argentine name for a sand shark.
And why would you name a band after a sand shark?
Pipi said it had something to do with not being able to go shark fishing with his father the year he started the group (the Piazzollas are
big shark fishermen) and, no doubt, also because sharks are bad ass. Pipi proudly showed me a picture of his father and him posed next to a ten-foot sand shark that they bagged off the coast of Mar del Plata. If I unexpectedly end up staying in Argentina through the next austral summer, shark fishing with the Piazzollas will be of the highest priority.Between interviews, I caught two excellent shows. The first, a Friday night gig at Thelonious with Ramiro Flores's Quintet, a group that has already gotten some love on this blog. The second, a Sunday night trip to the nearby city of La Plata, to see my friend Ale Demogli play with his quintet and a dynamic Brazilian saxophonist named Marcelo Coehlo.
My first article for All About Jazz, a review of the Charles Lloyd New Quartet's San Francisco concert is slated for publication this Sunday, and my first dispatch from Buenos Aires has been submitted as well...
1 comment:
I saw both the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Ramsey Lewis Trio at the Kennedy Center on Sunday night. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of Brubeck's beginning the US' program of "cultural diplomacy" by going to Poland, and, later to the Soviet Union. He was the first jazz artist to go behind the Iron Curtain. Followed later by Armstrong, Benny Goodman, etc., etc. A real break through at the time and he is still LOVED in Russia and Eastern Europe to this day. He is, amazingly, just short of 88 years old and still going strong. Not on the experimental end of things, but brilliant nonetheless. You would have loved it!
BB
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