INTERVIEW: Dissecting the unconventionality of Astor Piazzolla
Photo: That’s Not Tango is a special evening celebrating the music of Astor Piazzolla. Lesley Karsten, who co-wrote the show, will be featured on vocals along with a quartet of musicians. Photo courtesy of Mihyun Kang / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
Astor Piazzolla’s music has a story to tell.
The great composer’s output throughout the 20th century provides modern-day interpreters evidence of the diverse and varied influences that held sway over Piazzolla’s personal and professional life. By listening to his music, one can hear the Lower East Side of New York City, the traces of klezmer, the hints of Harlem jazz, the unmistakable vibes of Argentine tango.
Piazzolla’s compositions have always been a melting pot of styles and genres, and that’s why he continues to be the subject of retrospectives and celebrations more than 25 years after his death.
Lesley Karsten knows a thing or two about Piazzolla. She is one of the chief creative forces behind a special evening dedicated to the man. That’s Not Tango — Astor Piazzolla, A Life in Music will be presented July 30 and 31 at the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City.
Karsten will star in the show, and she will be backed by a quartet of musicians, consisting of JP Jofre on bandoneón (an accordion-like concertina from Argentina), Brandt Frederiksen on piano, Nick Danielson on violin and Pablo Aslan on bass. The evening, which has been previously seen at Joe’s Pub and SubCulture, was written by Karsten and Stephen Wadsworth, who pulls double duty as the director.
“They can expect a very moving experience that is a marriage of dramatic narrative and music — and really exceptional music,” Karsten said in a recent phone interview. “Piazzolla is a very interesting composer because people have bits and pieces of knowledge about him. Many of them have heard his music and not known who he was.”
Piazzolla’s compositions have a way of working their way into the ear and never leaving. The pieces, sometimes featured in movies and dance halls, pulsate throughout the tango, classical and jazz worlds.
That’s Not Tango will not only present the composer’s work but also share stories from his life — and what a life. Piazzolla was born near Buenos Aires, but he moved to New York City at the age of 3. His family settled in to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and it didn’t take long for the young Piazzolla to soak in all that the Big Apple’s music scene had to offer.
“His body of work is so much more diverse, and he’s an interesting composer because he didn’t do anything conventionally,” Karsten said. “He never went to conservatory. He grew up as a tough kid on the Lower East Side, which many people don’t realize that he, in some formative way, is a New Yorker. … He inhaled the influences of that neighborhood, so he listened to his father’s scratchy tango records, yes. But he also heard classical music, and he also heard klezmer. He lived next door to a synagogue, so he inhaled everything. And jazz, oh my God, he’d sneak out while his folks were asleep and take the subway to Harlem. A tiny, little kid, like 12 and 13, he couldn’t even get into the clubs, but he inhaled that music.”
What Piazzolla did with these influences was musical metabolism. He combined the styles into a unique sound, always throwing out conventionality and relying on instinct.
Eventually he moved back to Argentina and took a tango apprenticeship under the great bandleader Anibal Troilo, and he studied composition with Alberto Ginastera. Later, he took lessons with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and it’s believed that from these French lessons he started to redefine the tango genre, essentially put the “Piazzolla touch” on his original compositions.
“He created his own musical vocabulary,” Karsten said. “This was done by someone who never approached anything conventionally. … And so much of it is a part of the immigrant experience really.”
Karsten identified Piazzolla’s compositions as the music of exile — and not necessarily exile from place, but perhaps exile from one self. It’s “poignant beauty,” she said, and it resides on the edge of sentimentality (making sure never to cross that line).
For Karsten, who first heard the composer’s work interpreted by violinist Gidon Kremer, Piazzolla’s work has several essential elements: romance, beauty, sensuality, edginess, grittiness, honesty. All of these facets will be on display during That’s Not Tango.
“What people should expect from this is a really exciting and also emotionally compelling evening of astonishingly beautiful music and a surprisingly moving and complex story about a complex figure who ended up being one of the most important composers of the 20th century,” she said. “I’ve deepened my relationship to the material. … A work of art is not a static thing. If it’s alive and vital, you’re in communication with it all the time, and it starts to tell you what it is. It’s like a kid that grows up and finally finds his or her voice and says, ‘This is what I want.’ And you have to pay attention.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
That’s Not Tango — Astor Piazzolla, A Life in Music will be presented July 30 and 31 at the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City. The evening, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, stars Lesley Karsten on vocals, JP Jofre on bandoneón, Brandt Frederiksen on piano, Nick Danielson on violin and Pablo Aslan on bass. Click here for more information and tickets.
