Dino Saluzzi - Albores (2020) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

An album of soliloquies from the master. After highly acclaimed albums in formations from duo and trio to family band and orchestra, here is the great Argentinean bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi in his first purely solo recording in more than 30 years. (The early solo albums Kultrum and Andina established his reputation outside his homeland). Recorded in the Saluzzi Music Studio in Buenos Aires between February and June 2019, it is a powerful reminder of Dino’s gifts as a musical storyteller of great subtlety. His pieces, in this intimate recording, reach back to early memories; “Don Caye”, subtitled “Variations on the work of Cayetano Saluzzi”, is a most touching dedication to Dino’s father. Throughout, the bandoneonist reflects upon the fleeting passage of time, instrument and performer breathing as one.

Recorded in Buenos Aires last year, Albores [Dawn] is among Dino Saluzzi’s most intimate albums, featuring the great Argentine bandoneonist alone with the instrument that has been his constant companion since childhood.

ECM has documented Saluzzi’s work in many different creative contexts over the years, but it was as a solo performer that he made his first major statement for the label, with Kultrum (recorded 1982) and then Andina (1988). His bandoneon soliloquies hold a special fascination. To hear Dino playing solo is to hear him thinking aloud, in music that traces aspects of a long life and reflects upon friendships and on spiritual matters, drawing inspiration from the arts and from everyday reality. Like one of his permanent references, Jorge Luis Borges, Saluzzi combines memories, meditations, and imaginative flights in the creation of his own world. “Albores is the outcome of more than six decades of understanding music as the product of reason and discernment,” writes Luján Baudino in the liner notes, “the act of capturing feelings in the depth of the soul.”

Often characterised as a “storytelling” musician, Saluzzi’s tales are multi-layered and allusive. The album opens with “Adiós Maestro Kancheli”, a tribute to the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, who died in 2019. Saluzzi played some of Kancheli’s melodies on the album Themes from the Songbook, recorded in 2010. In his prayerful homage on Albores, Saluzzi alludes to Andean music, a long way from the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps recognising a common bond with another composer whose natural habitat was not the conservatory.

TRACKLIST

1. Dino Saluzzi - Adiós Maestro Kancheli
2. Dino Saluzzi - Ausencias
3. Dino Saluzzi - Según me cuenta la vida – Milonga
4. Dino Saluzzi - Íntimo
5. Dino Saluzzi - La Cruz del Sur (2da cadencia)
6. Dino Saluzzi - Écuyère
7. Dino Saluzzi - Ficción
8. Dino Saluzzi - Don Caye – Variaciones sobre obra de Cayetano Saluzzi
9. Dino Saluzzi - Ofrenda – Tocata



Thanks to the Original customer.