Performance by Whizbang (Chris) from Recital #34 - 2014-05-15

• Performer: Whizbang (Chris)
• Location:
• Experience: 35+
• Composer: Astor Piazzolla
• Piece: Milonga del Angel
• Duration: 392
• Music Link: click to play
• Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_KHGV08E74
• Music Source: Piano sheet, arranged from the ensemble by John Mortensen
• Instrument: Fandrich Piano Company U-122
• Recording Method: Zoom H4 and iPhone
• Info: This is not ragtime. It's also the product of about 9 months of painstaking work--a real labor of love that was at the limit of my abilities but which finally came together. The only editing in this piece was to trim empty space off the beginning and the end of the recording. It took about 7 or so takes over 45 minutes. I usually try to capture an early take that I can live with and then continue recording a few times. With less pressure from the recording, I tend to find at least one of the subsequent takes will be less stuff and thus more musical. Astor Piazzolla is a composer that many of you may not be familiar with. He's an Argentinian composer who originated the style of music called nuevo tango. He is possibly my favorite composer but he composed for ensembles of 5 or more instruments and it's hard to find playable piano works of his music, which features multiple instruments trading melodic lines in dance-like counterpoint. Piazzolla himself played the bandoneon, which is a button accordion. You should look up his music on YouTube. He will change your opinion of the accordion. Piazzolla studied music and composition under Ginastera. He won a composition contest, the prize of which was to be able to study in Paris with the renowned teacher Nadia Boulanger. If ragtime and nuevo tango have anything in common, it's that they at heart are bordello music. Both styles found their first home in red-light districts. (Jelly Roll Morton, however, did claim tango as the root of ragtime.) Piazzolla played his many compositions for Boulanger who, paraphrasing said, "I hear Shostakovich and other composers in your music, but I don't hear you." She was infamously frank about prying into her student's lives and when she learned that Piazzolla had been earning his living by playing tango in bordellos, she made him play one for her. Afterwards, she went, "There, there is the real Piazzolla!" Piazzolla destroyed many of his early compositions and started to invent a new style of tango, influenced by jazz. Piazzolla's music is incredibly emotional, even melodramatic, contrasting dark 'masculine' sections with incredibly lyric feminine sections. I think he'll be considered one of the great composers.