Paquito D'Rivera

Marco Granados

Pablo Aslan

Emilio Solla

Fernando Otero

Raul Jaurena

Ayano Kataoka

JULY 13 BUENOS AIRES NOW
TANGO AFTER PIAZZOLLA
SONIDOS LATINOS III
Sunday, 4:30pm
Venetian Theater
Tickets:  $40.00, $32.50, $25.00, $17.50  

Camerata Latina:   Paquito D'Rivera, clarinet; Marco Granados, flute;
Pablo Aslan, bass; Emilio Solla, piano; Fernando Otero, piano;
Nicolas Danielson, violin; Raul Jaurena, bandoneon;
Ayano Kataoka, marimba; St. Luke's String Quartet

Sonidos Latinos heated up with an all Tango program.  Regarded as the father of the modern Tango, which was well known as a strikingly dramatic dance, Astor Piazzolla elevated and introduced its form and feeling into concert music.  Buenos Aires Now explored how the composers since have taken up Piazzolla's call.  Caramoor's Composer-in-Residence Paquito D'Rivera and Sonidos Latinos favorite Marco Granados returned with a star-studded cast of musicians deeply versed in this vibrant art form.

Introduce your family to Caramoor.  Purchase Concert Al Fresco tickets and enjoy the performance from the picnic grounds. 
Al Fresco Tickets:  $9.00    order online

Sonidos Latinos is made possible by generous support from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Pablo Aslan, bass ~ Argentine-born bassist and composer Pablo Aslan has resided in the U.S. since 1980. Director of Avantango, he is also a founder and codirector of New York Buenos Aires Connection and New York Tango Trio with bandoneonist Raul Jaurena.  With these groups he has recorded several CDs and toured throughout the Americas, Europe and Russia. He participated in the 2nd and 3rd Tango Summits in Spain and Uruguay and recently toured the US and Japan with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Astor Piazzolla Quintet, appearing also on PBS and ABC. He is a member of BMG artist Pablo Ziegler’s Quintet for New Tango, with whom he recorded and toured extensively in the U.S., Europe and Japan. He appeared at Carnegie Hall and on PBS with Tango Magic and directed the New York Tango Quartet in the 2000 JVC Jazz Festival also at Carnegie Hall. Aslan performed and recorded in 1999-2000 with clarinetist David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness in the U.S. and Europe.

Pablo has worked with artists as varied as film composer Lalo Shiffrin, Grammy-winning singer Shakira, Grammy-winning and Academy Award nominated Jorge Calandrelli, Grammy nominated Argentine pianist Adrian Iaies, Grammy-winning Argentine composer Carlos Franzetti, Osvaldo Golijov, Klezmer radical Frank London, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In addition to writing and arranging for his own groups, Aslan has written music for the New York-based Tango Mujer and was arranger and musical director of Jenny Levison’s Shtil, Mayn Corazon – a Yiddish Tango Cabaret.

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Nicolas Danielson, violin ~ Nicolas Danielson gave his first public recital at age 8, performed with the Boston Pops at age 11, and the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 15. After completing his studies at the Curtis Institute with Ivan Galamian, Nicolas played with the Chester Quartet as a first violin for five years. As a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra since 1990, Nicolas has played on many recordings, including Stravinsky's Concertino on the Grammy winning CD Shadow Dances.  In 1992 he assumed the position of Associate Concertmaster and Soloist the New York City Ballet Orchestra, where he appeared as a Solo Violin on stage with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He is also engaged as the Violin Soloist of Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof.  Nicolas is an avid performer of Tango music. He has played for Broadway's Tango Argentino, and has recorded with tango pianist Pablo Ziegler and singer Denyce Graves for RCA records.


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Marco Granados, flute ~ A native of Venezuela, Marco Granados maintains an active international career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. His diverse repertoire spans from classical to folk, with an emphasis on Latin-American music as his specialty. He has been a member of many critically acclaimed ensembles, among them the Quintet of the Americas and Triangulo (Latin American Chamber Trio). As a founding member of the Amerigo Ensemble, The Camerata Latinoamericana and the Granados/Abend Duo, Mr. Granados’ collaborations also include those with The Cuarteto Latinoamericano, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and with such distinguished artists as Paquito D'Rivera, flutist Ransom Wilson, harpist Nancy Allen, oboist Heinz Holliger, flutist William Bennett, as well as with soprano Renee Fleming and baritone Dwayne Croft. Recent performances include recitals at Wigmore Hall in London, tours of the US, Slovenia and South Africa. He has also performed at many summer music festivals including Moab, Chautauqua and the Colorado Music Festival in addition to the Caramoor International Music Festival. Mr. Granados is Music Advisor to Caramoor’s Latin American Music Initiative: Sonidos Latinos.

Fernando Otero, piano  ~ Argentine composer and pianist Fernando Otero found his voice as writer, musician and bandleader when, at the urging of one of his music teachers, he began to incorporate the indigenous sounds of his native Buenos Aires into his work. He was just a teenager then, but an exceptionally gifted one, a serious student of classical music with an ability to master a variety of instruments from a very young age. Otero had already begun to experiment with rudimentary home recordings and was eager to start writing on his own, though he gravitated more to a jazz idiom than a classical one. Otero liked popular music too -- often learning as much from the rock and jazz albums his older sister brought home as from his formal lessons – but he had given little thought to the gorgeous clamor around him.

As he recalls, a guitar and composition instructor, Marcelo Braga Saralegui “showed me the possibility of developing something with the roots of tango, the sound of tango. Not necessarily tango itself, but the music I heard as a child, the sound in the streets. I started working with a bandoneon player and tried my first project, which I called X Tango.”

Twenty years have passed since Otero opened his ears to this wealth of ideas, and ever since he has pursued his vision of X Tango. On his Nonesuch debut Pagina de Buenos Aires, he does evokes a feeling of Buenos Aires – something you can sense even if you’ve never been there --through his innovative use of the bandoneon, the accordion-like instrument at the heart of all tango. But the world Otero conjures up is really all his own. Tango is a jumping-off point for an instrumental sound that boasts the improvisatory thrill of jazz within a more formal, contemporary classical structure. In his last CD Pagina de Buenos Aires, his work is often short, fast-paced and intense, full of enough dramatic stops and starts to astonish first-time listeners -- and confound any couple that might be fooled into thinking this is simply dance music.

As a composer, Otero is both rigorous and playful. His pieces at times echo the elegant nuevo tango of Astor Piazzola, but they also harbor a mischievous spirit that suggests Carl Stallings’ ingenious scoring for animated cartoons -- especially on tracks like La Vista Gorda and De Ahora En Mas, when piano, violin and bandoneon seem to be chasing each other around a melody. He counters this uptempo material with romantic interludes redolent of vintage film scores on tracks like Asuncion and Calendario. It’s no surprise that the always adventurous Kronos Quartet has commissioned a piece from him, scheduled to debut this fall.

Fernando Otero showcases the artist performing original material in a variety of formats: with a quintet of piano, violin, cello, acoustic bass and bandoneon; a trio of bass, bandoneon and piano; a duo, featuring long-time collaborator, violinist Nick Danielson; and on solo piano. The final two tracks are orchestral works conducted by Otero and featuring a 25-piece ensemble, plus band-mate Hector Del Curto on bandoneon. Though the majority of the work is new, a few pieces had previously appeared on Otero’s 2002 quintet session, Plan, released under the group name Fernando Otero X Tango. Taken together, these tracks illustrate the breadth, consistency and remarkable maturity of Otero’s vision.

“His music is very expressive, “ says violinist Danielson, a distinguished artist himself, who has performed with the New York City Ballet Orchestra and played the title role in the recent Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. “It’s not easy to play. You have to play it with all your emotion.”

Otero has clearly focused his ambitions on his compositions, not the machinations of his career, which he has allowed to develop somewhat serendipitously. He relocated to New York City a decade ago, after brief stops in London and Madrid; Otero admits, however, that he was drawn here by a romance, not according to some master plan. He lives in a multi-ethnic Brooklyn neighborhood that has not yet experienced the gentrification happening merely blocks away. This bohemian refuge, teetering on the brink of change, more than suits him; it seems to reflect exactly where he stands as an artist.

While he remained unknown to the world at large, Otero had, for some years now, been a well-kept secret among jazz and classical insiders. His Plan CD has circulated among fellow musicians and attracted them to his recitals. Otero has composed and performed with several symphonies and chamber groups in the U.S. and Mexico, and has also written for ballet and theatre companies. Actress Salma Hayek introduced Quincy Jones to Otero at a Hollywood party; Jones subsequently arrived unannounced backstage after Otero performed a two-hour solo piano recital in Los Angeles, offering advice, encouragement and an open-ended invitation to do a project with him. (“It was as if Santa Claus had come backstage,” Otero jokes.) He has collaborated with one-time Bill Evans sideman Eddie Gomez, flautist Dave Valentin and pianist/film composer Dave Grusin, among others; he played with Chico O’Farrill’s Jazz Orchestra at jazz @Lincoln Center; and, most recently, he’s joined clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera on stage and in the studio.

“Last year,” says D’Rivera, “our trumpeter Diego Urcola called my attention to Nicholas Danielson and Fernando Otero, whom he holds in high regard. Intrigued, I attended a recital they presented in Manhattan. I was so impressed by what I heard that I invited the violinist to be part of my own concert at Jazz At Lincoln Center and asked Fernando to record his wonderful Milonga 10 with me on my first self-produced CD, Funk Tango.  Even since, Fernando has become one of my favorite composers.”

Otero was reared in an environment steeped in music and the arts. His father, an actor, passed away when Otero was a year old; he was brought up by his mother, Elsa Marval, an internationally successful opera singer.  His parents were first generation Argentines. His maternal grandparents had emigrated from Spain, where his grandmother had also been an opera singer; his father’s family had come from the South of France. As Otero recalls, “Music at home was very natural. We had a piano, and everyone was singing and playing --my mother, my sister, me. I didn’t even think about being a musician or not. I just was a musician. And I remember being a musician all my life. I never thought about doing anything else.”

Otero’s mother fueled his desire to master new instruments, absorb new ideas. He was studying piano and singing at age 5; guitar by the time he was 10. He also picked up the drums, accordion and melodica. Says Otero, “Whatever I requested from my mother that had a musical aspect – whether it was a teacher, a show, an instrument or a record – the answer was always yes.” She took him to hear symphonic music at the Teatro Colon, where she herself had performed, and that piqued Otero’s curiosity about playing with and composing for an orchestra. Among those who taught him as an adolescent was Domingo Marafiotti resident conductor of the Symphonic Orchestra of the Teatro Colon, with whom Otero took master classes in orchestration and conducting. Otero recalls, “The teachers were serious – and the price my mother paid for the lessons were serious too.” He admired Igor Stravinsky and, especially, Bela Bartok, whose music, he points out, also incorporated folkloric influences. As he explains, “They were representing their cultures and they were using their language to express themselves and that was very important to me.” The South American influences he cites were all virtuosos as well as iconoclasts,:
Argentinian legend Piazzola, the Brazilian composer Egberto Gismonti and Uruguayan multi-instrumentalist Hugo Fattoruso.

Early on, the precocious Otero began to improvise his own recordings at home: “I liked to go into the bathroom where I could get a natural reverb sound. I had two cassette recorders that I used for overdubbing – it was all low quality, of course, as a result of dubbing and dubbing on two tapes and adding tracks in the bathroom with a guitar. I’d stay there, making music -- singing, playing guitar or small drums, whatever portable instruments I could get in there.” As he grew older, Otero learned how to navigate a real studio and he was often asked to produce and mix other local artists.

For many years, the young Otero thought he would become a singer; it was surely part of his musical DNA. He had vocalized at home when he was a child and later, he would front his first three bands. But instrumental music proved to be the most powerful way for Otero to channel everything he’d learned and wanted to express about his extraordinary upbringing, about the music that had shaped him, about Buenos Aires. Without singing a word, he discovered how to tell a story, and it’s one that has clearly just begun.

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Emilio Solla, piano ~ Born in Mendoza, Argentina, and raised in Buenos Aires, Emilio Solla started his classical piano instruction at 8 and has a degree from the National Conservatory. The music at home was mostly Argentine north-west folk music, his parents being friends with some of the most representative musicians in that field, such as Jaime Torres and Hugo Diaz. As he heard Piazzolla for the first time, tango music made a strong impression on him, and so happened with jazz. In these early years, he also devoted much time to studying composing and arranging

All these influences are very much present in Solla's music, whose personal approach and strong melodic ideas makes him one of the most outstanding artists in what has been called "tango-jazz" music. With 5 CDs as a band leader and many more as sideman, Solla has played all around Europe, Japan and the US. His collaborations as composer and arranger include Paquito D'Rivera, Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Big Band, Pablo Aslan's Avantango and many others. He moved to Barcelona in 1996, and to New York in 2006, where he is currently playing with his New York Tango Jazz Project to acclaimed reviews.

"Sentido is simply one of the best jazz albums of the year" All About Jazz, 2005

"His ability as a composer and pianist are simply phenomenal. Solla possesses al the ingredients that make an artist stand out from the pack".                        
                                                                                                                      
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