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| Roger Davidson's "Te Extraño Buenos Aires” CD Release Celebration Tango began as a dance. In Te Extraño Buenos Aires, pianist and composer Roger Davidson´s fourth tango recording, he brings the music back to its roots. Recorded in Buenos Aires and featuring a superb cast of Argentine players and arrangers, Te Extraño Buenos Aires is the first tango recording by Davidson in which he is not playing. "That's part of being a composer. You want other people playing your music so the music gets around, " says Davidson. "And this was a wonderful opportunity to get it played and recorded in Buenos Aires, the capital of tango." A skillful pianist and a prolific and adventurous composer, Davidson has followed his passions into a broad range of styles — from jazz, sacred choral music and tango, to klezmer and bossa nova. His previous tango albums Mango Tango (2000), "featuring different kinds of tango, not just Argentine, " he once noted, and Pasion Por la Vida (2009), a duet with Latin Grammy winning bandoneonist Raul Jaurena, both showcased his original compositions. About Pasion Por la Vida, a reviewer wrote, "Whether your intent is to hit the dance floor and try your luck with a tango or just sit back and enjoy the music, you'll be well served, " (Blogcritics) Another writer pointed out that "his tangos jump out from the disc." (tangoreporter.com) His Amor Por El Tango (2004) included classic tangos, originals pieces and tango arrangements of Cole Porter's music, another one of his passions. For Te Extraño Buenos Aires, Davidson on called Argentine-born Grammy and Latin Grammy nominee bassist and producer Pablo Aslan, his longtime collaborator and producer, and entrusted him with the challenge. "One of the things Roger wanted was to hear other pianists play his music, " says Aslan. "But at the same time these are pianist-arrangers, all three of them." The 15 pieces selected were then divided between Andrés Linetzky, Abel Rogantini and José "Pepe" Motta, each one a player and arranger with a distinct style. To complete the group, Aslan called on violinist (over) Ramiro Gallo and bandoneonist Nicolás Enrich, both young and both very active in the contemporary tango scene in Buenos Aires who also had worked with him in previous tango projects. Davidson made no specific demands or give particular instructions as to how the music should be interpreted. As for Aslan's own directions, "the main thing I told the guys about interpreting Roger's music was to stay close to the tunes. That's the whole point of these songs. Roger has a highly developed sense of melody and structure. He is a very lyrical writer. And in every genre he writes, he writes very lyrical tunes. His big influences are people like Michel Legrand and American composers like Cole Porter that he knows so well. Invariably, his tunes are very nice to play." "I've had had that experience in Rio recording Journey to Rio (2011) his most recent Brazilian music album, " recalls Aslan. "We took a huge book of tunes and had the best musicians in Rio play and record some of them and they loved them because they were not only lovely but very idiomatic — and the same thing happened in Buenos Aires with his tangos. The musicians all took to them, they thought they were great tunes and had a lot fun arranging and playing them." Not surprisingly, given Davidson's lyrical talents, many of the tangos in Te Extraño Buenos Aires suggest songs without words —and all are eminently danceable. Some of the arrangements (such as "No Importa" or "Alicia, " a piece from Amor por el Tango) evoke at times tango's classic sound of the 1940s and '50s, the grand dancehalls and the work of bandoneonist and bandleader Aníbal Troilo. There are pieces that bring the listener to big-production tango shows, pieces full of grand gestures and dramatic pauses and turns, as in "Para Este Día" or "Tango Triste" (a song also in Davidson's Mango Tango). And then, others, such as "Recuerdo de un Amor, " nod towards Astor Piazzolla, the major innovator in modern tango, or, as in "Perdida, " a new take on a piece from Davidson's 2004 Amor Por El Tango, incorporates the vocabulary of jazz without ever losing its tango feel. The result is a recording that sounds at once diverse and of one piece. What unifies the sound of Te Extraño Buenos Aires, says Aslan, is that "you hear various approaches to tango but it is not a recording of European or North American tango; this is tango from Buenos Aires." And in taking it back to its source, the composer got to hear his music made new again. "I did not have a preconceived idea on how they should play these pieces and I knew Pablo would keep them close to the tunes. I trusted him, " says Davidson. "But these musicians came up with a lot of ideas that were different, and sometimes better, than mine." Te Extraño Buenos Aires is available at traditional and online music stores; it is distributed by Allegro Media Group and The Orchard. Roger Davidson's "Te Extraño Buenos Aires" CD release celebration The Milonga @ Astoria Tango Club Sunday November 23rd 6PM write your comments about the article :: © 2014 Jazz News :: home page |