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Tango Nuevo

Piazzolla / Ziegler / Ziegler / O'riley Release Date: 09/09/2016
Label: Steinway & Sons Catalog #: 30050 Spars Code: n/a
Composer:  Pablo Ziegler ,  Astor Piazzolla Performer:  Pablo Ziegler ,  Christopher O'Riley Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo Length: 1 Hours 11 Mins.

Pablo Ziegler, Astor Piazzolla’s collaborator and pioneer of the art of Nuevo Tango, joins the sensational Christopher O’Riley in a stunning album of compelling, vibrant and moving works for two pianos.

Credits:
Recorded December 7-10, 2015 at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia
Producer: Dan Merceruio
Engineer: Daniel Shores

Executive Producer: Jon Feidner
Design: Cover to Cover Design, Anilda Carrasquillo
Painting: The Passing, Oil Painting, Justyna Kopania
Production Assistant: Robert Hillinck
Piano Technician: John Veitch
Pianos: Steinway Model D #538137 (New York); Model D #590904 (New York)

Reviews:
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The vogue for tango music in classical circles seems to have abated a bit from its high point in the early 2000s, but this may be all to the good. Players are exploring new directions in classic tango, the Piazzolla style, the fascinating fusion style electrotango, and more. Here you have an album of tango nuevo by the Argentine pianist Pablo Ziegler and the American Christopher O'Riley, whom U.S. listeners may recognize as the host of the From the Top program on National Public Radio. The term tango nuevo has been applied to the music of Piazzolla himself, but this is nuevo tango nuevo. Ziegler was the pianist in Piazzolla's band for the last 12 years of Piazzolla's life and has recorded music that closely follows his mentor's. Here he branches out, a few times following Piazzolla's own recordings (as in Buenos Aires Hora Cero), but more often departing from his substantially. Sample the Elegia sobre Adiós Nonino, an elegantly meditative reworking of and gloss on Piazzolla's classic, for two pianos. Ziegler and O'Riley have a nice jazz-like rapport, and an account of how they came to work together would have been more useful than the canned biographies of the two artists in the booklet. The compositions by Ziegler himself, often lightly programmatic, make a nice foil for the Piazzolla works and are often lighter in nature. Steinway & Sons' sound, engineered at the Sono Luminus studios in Virginia, is superb. Recommended for tango lovers, especially those interested in the music's intersections with jazz, which was an underappreciated inspiration for Piazzolla's style.

-- James Manheim, AllMusic Guide

As John Daly would say when hosting "What's My Line?", let's just flip over all the cards, shall we? The current tango master and the classical piano/public radio host team up for a duet recording of the kind of aching beauty that real, hard core tango is all about. As much a visual performance as an audio one, these two show they understand what it means to bring unbridled passion and fire to a performance that is meant to be fraught with emotion. It's hard to come across anything that's more of a real deal than this and discerning tastes should revel in it's beauty post haste. Killer stuff throughout.

-- MidWest Record Read less