Astor Piazzolla fans: an interesting website

If any of you are Piazzolla fans (I've been one for a long time), I stumbled on a terrific website today that has loads of information as well as lots of music samples for exploring the byways and highways of his long career. Particularly cool is a biography page with links to a CD's worth of full-length Real Audio cuts so you can listen to an "audio" biography as you read the text.

I've known the basic outlines of the career for a while, but I was more than a little sketchy about anything earlier than the late '60s. This site helped me to put the pieces together and place some of my recordings in the proper context. Highly recommended.

And for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of checking out the man's music, go out and buy yourselves a copy of "Tango: Zero Hour" on Pangea (I think Nonesuch has just reissued it) immediately!

L.

 

I'll second that recommedation. I bought a Pangea copy about a year ago, played it last week (yeah, it's like that here..) and it went straight into the keep corner. You wouldn't think such dark music could be made with strings and an accordeon, bandoneon or whatever. Very compelling, and not what you expect. Not your mamma's Tango.

Mike

 

Re: Re: Astor Piazzolla fans: an interesting website

Indeed. Like a knife moving in the dark. You're cut before you even knew you were in danger.

"Tango: Zero Hour" captures the great '80's quintet at the top of its game. I also really like the other record they made at about the same time for Pangea, "The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night." It's looser (Zero Hour has a kind of rigor to its intensity) and has a jazzier feel to it, mostly a result of Paquito D'Rivera's wonderful sax work.

These were the first two Piazzolla recordings I heard. And they're only the tip an iceberg that floats all the way up from the 1940's.

L.