Cité de la musique

Saluzzi, Dino

album cover

New Age Space Tango from the Bill Evans of the Bandoneón

In his poem "Where Everything Is Music," the eleventh-century Sufi mystic Rumi describes music as a part of nature, a transitory resource that can always be replenished. "This singing art is sea foam, the graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor."

Rumi might have been writing about a place like Cité de la musique, where the Argentine Dino Saluzzi imagines music that is fierce and definite and at the same time just a breeze. A master of the accordion-like bandoneón, Saluzzi began his career in the shadow of Astor Piazzolla—the legendary musician and composer who brought tango out of its slumber in the 1960s with incredibly intense and uncompromising music (see p. 599).

Saluzzi quickly differentiated himself from Piazzolla and others by concentrating on pure sound. He seeks luminous single notes, which he holds until they bead with sweat. His chord clusters are free of the wheeziness that plagues so much squeezebox music. His lines have folk-like echoes inside them, phrases that are at once comforting and eerie.

Though Saluzzi has recorded with various ensembles for several labels, many of his great works are found on ECM, the European jazz label known for its crystalline recordings. It's a nice fit, as Saluzzi's best work happens in airy, paper-thin atmospheres. On Cité de la musique, the bandoneón states a pensive theme and then trails away, leaving a lingering audio vapor trail. Sometimes Saluzzi sounds as if he's way out in the ozone, but since much of the music is rooted in tango, he's really just a block or two away. The explorations, aided by Saluzzi's son José (acoustic guitar) and Marc Johnson (bass), glimmer in unexpectedly poignant ways, haunting you well after the music has ended. Get inside these chamber-music conversations, with their quiet hints of heartbreak, and you may find yourself wishing it were possible to live in a city of music exactly like this.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1997, ECM
Key Tracks: "El rio y el abuelo," "Winter," "Cité de la musique"
Catalog Choice: Rios.
Next Stop: Pat Metheny Group: Letter from Home
After That: Gustavo Santaolalla: Ronroco (see p. 672).
Book Pages: 669–670