Tango: Zero Hour

Performer: Astor Piazzolla
Engineer: Jon Fausty
Producer: Kip Hanrahan
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Personnel: Astor Piazzolla (bandoneon); Horacio Malvicino (guitar); Fernando Suarez Paz (violin); Pablo Ziegler (piano); Hector Console (bass). Recorded at Sound Idea Studio, New York, New York in May 1986. Originally released on American Clave. Includes liner notes by Fernando Gonzales. Considered by Piazzolla to be his best work, 1986's Tango Zero Hour was the culmination of a career that began in Argentina in the 1930s. Piazzolla started out auspiciously enough working with one of the brightest lights of the classic tango era, singer Carlos Gard�l. After Gard�l's tragic death in 1935 (by turning down an offer to tour with the singer at the age of 13, Piazzolla amazingly avoided the plane crash that killed Gard�l), Piazzolla went on to perfect his bandone�n playing in various tango bands during the '40s and '50s, eventually studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Like she did with so many other great talents like Aaron Copeland and Quincy Jones, Boulanger encouraged Piazzolla to find a new way of playing his county's music. Piazzolla began experimenting and soon enough perfected what is now known as "nuevo tango." Moving tango music into the more serious area of high-art composition, Piazzolla added eccentric and, at times, avant-garde touches to the traditional format; he gained the appreciation of adventurous music lovers worldwide while alienating tango purists back home. Tango Zero Hour is the fruition of his groundbreaking work and one of the most amazing albums released during the latter years of the 20th century. Joined by his Quinteto Tango Nuevo featuring violin, piano, guitar, and bass, Piazzolla offers up seven original tango gems that take in the noirish, "Zero Hour" world found between midnight and dawn. Essential for all music lovers. ~ Stephen Cook To paraphrase a statement made by Piazolla in the disc's liner notes, TANGO: ZERO HOUR is undoubtedly the finest effort by this utterly unique Argentinia-born and New York-raised musician. A master of the bandoneon, a buttoned squeeze-box that is the central instrument of tango music, Piazolla forges a hybrid style that mixes his love of tango with elements of jazz and classical and unifies the blend with an avant-garde sensibility. TANGO: ZERO HOUR supports Piazolla with an ensemble of violin, piano, guitar, and bass for an album of great complexity and fierce passion. The result is something of a cross between experimental chamber composition and careening dance songs, music that sounds at once ethnic, indigenous, singular, and contemporary. Each of the album's seven pieces is demanding, though the rewards--from the insane spill of "Michelangelo '70" to the achingly beautiful "Milonga Del Angel"--are multiple. This is the best kind of fusion music: intense, multi-dimensional, and adventurous.

While tango had long been associated with the dancehalls of Buenos Aires, Astor Piazolla reinvented the music for the concert stage. In the 1950s and 1960s, he infused tango with the oblique harmonies of jazz and classical music, as well as new instruments such as electric guitar, and although he may have alienated traditionalists, he gained a worldwide audience seduced by his music's exotic beauty. Over the course of five decades, Piazolla continually expanded the scope of the tango--or "tango nuevo," as his music came to be called--to produce a wealth of inventive, emotionally rich music. He died in 1992.

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