What better way to escape the subzero temperatures than a trip to steamy Buenos Aires? On Friday night the crowds inside the NEIU auditorium got a respite from the “Snowmageddon” as they watched the Pablo Ziegler Trio perform two sets of sizzling contemporary tangos, an event that was part of NEIU’s Jewel Box Series. The zealous nature of tango seemed to take hold of its fans as discussions over the genre itself sparked up among the attendees of Friday’s performance. Some were surprised (pleasantly and otherwise) at how jazzy some pieces sounded.
The program featured Ziegler’s own compositions and arrangements of Astor Piazzolla’s tangos, including five pieces from Ziegler’s Latin Grammy-winning album, “Bajo Cero”. Piazzolla, the father of Nuevo Tango, for whom Ziegler played piano during the 1980s, has heavily influenced his own tangos. Ziegler himself has said that his inclusion in Piazzolla’s New Tango Quintet was due primarily to his background in jazz, at a time when Piazzolla was experimenting with the genre.
Throw the distinctive tango rhythms and melancholic sounds of the bandoneon together with some jazz-inspired improvisation, bring to a simmer and you’ve got the basics of Ziegler’s Nuevo Tango. The combination of these two forms has garnered its fair share of critics, especially among the tango purists who maintain that intrusions of any kind into the through-composed form of the 1940s and 1950s (tango’s so-called golden age) are a travesty. When heard with open ears and mind, however, Nuevo Tango is undeniably powerful and exciting.
Ziegler’s fingers danced over, rather than tickled, the ivories with a frenetic energy that left more than a few spectators in awe. Claudio Ragazzi’s guitar provided a wonderfully spontaneous and ardent (yet never straying) voice, opening wide the door towards a more bluesy sound. Certainly one of the highlights was the stirring bandoneon. The tango is a form defined by its leading instrument: the melancholic sound of the bandoneon is its heart. German in origin, this free-reed instrument is a staple in tango orchestras and becoming increasingly popular around the world; though virtuoso performers like Hector del Curto are still rare enough in the U.S. to have made this a remarkable treat.
The most brilliant feature of Ziegler’s Nuevo Tango is that even though it is not written in the traditional structured form, his understanding of its essence and roots keeps the soul of tango alive.
All in all, the Pablo Ziegler Trio for Nuevo Tango performed a spellbinding array of heartrending and truly sophisticated, stimulating music.