In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, nowhere in Latin America did the passion for jazz rage stronger than in Argentina. Part of the same Parisian milieu as Silva and Baker in the 1930s, the Afro-Argentine guitarist Oscar Alemán was, after Django Reinhardt, probably the most prominent swing guitarist in [...]
On January 3, 1924, the Gershwin brothers were up late, George playing a game of pool with a friend and Ira perusing the morning edition of the next day’s The New York Herald. Among its pages Ira discovered an announcement for a concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music” [...]
Nicolai Kapustin (1937-2020)Nicolai Kapustin has quietly perfected a convincing and idiomatic fusion between the language of jazz and the structural demands of classical music. Trained as a classical pianist, he quickly became interested in jazz, particularly the music and performance style of Oscar Peterson. Skillfully blending and transcending both musical [...]
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) Born in 1876 in Cadiz, the historical seaport town at the southern-most tip of Andalusia, Manuel de Falla has been called the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century. His formal musical education began with piano lessons, and when de Falla was 20 his family [...]
Nuevo tango was created by Astor Piazzolla, a composer and bandoneón player, born in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1921. When only 3 years old, he moved with his family to New York’s lower East Side. Oddly, it was in New York, where he lived until he was 15 years [...]
What is it about tango that has held its popularity across the globe for more than a century? An article in the Smithsonian Magazine in 1993 described the dance as four legs and one heart! Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentine writer, described tango as "feeling that is danced" (tango [...]
Jaurena Is part of a younger generation of musicians composing tango music that both reflects their South American heritage and the contemporary times they live in. His works have been recorded by PASO on both its albums, Tango of the Americas and Tango without Borders. PASO is performing three [...]
