The Man In Black
New Tango Pianist Pablo Ziegler
by Mic Holwin
originally appeared in American Composers Orchestra Quarterly Vol. II No. 2 Spring 1998
It is 1987. The place is S.O.B.'s, New York City's lively Latin club, and Astor Piazzolla and his New Tango Quintet are on stage. Piazzolla, the Argentine musical bioengineer of a new breed of tango, is grappling with an infernal instrument in a way that is reminiscent of Kirk Douglas combating the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The bandoneon, black cousin of the accordion, furiously lashes out, ominously sinks back; Piazzolla, pushing and pulling the beast to the full extent of his arm span, is muscular, hard. So is the rest of his band, all of them dressed in black, all here to fight for the cause of nuevo tango.
Watching Piazzolla battle and win over the creature is now a permanently etched memory in my mind. But someone else from that night stands out as sharply as the Man and his monster: the pianist, wrestling with his instrument as passionately as Piazzolla. That man in black shirt and black vest playing a black instrument was Pablo Ziegler.
A porteno (as natives of Buenos Aires call themselves) and graduate of the Buenos Aires Conservatory of Music, Ziegler first studied classical piano, switching to jazz at the age of 15. In 1978, Piazzolla invited him to join his New Tango Quintet, the petri dish in which Piazzolla blended tango with Stravinsky to create new tango.
Ziegler remained his pianist for over a decade, then went on to found his own Quintet for New Tango. With the master's death in 1992, Ziegler became a touchstone for the "Piazzolla moment," as the pianist calls the current tango-crazy climate.
He set out to translate the quintet's new tangos into a version for pianists. Last year, Ziegler teamed up with classical pianist Emanuel Ax to record his two-piano arrangements of Piazzolla tangos and milongas on the Sony Classical album Los Tangueros, "tango men," a word applied to people who play or just love tango.
Ax, fully booked with his classical concert schedule, was unable to tour Los Tangueros, so Ziegler's producer suggested teaming with pianist Christopher O'Riley. O'Riley, an enthusiastic advocate of new music whose most recent solo release is an all-Stravinsky disc on Elektra, will perform with Ziegler at Weill Recital Hall and Thalia Spanish Theatre in Queens during the American Composers Orchestra's Sonidos de las Americas: Argentina festival in March.
The pianist's appeal to Ziegler lay not only in the fact that O'Riley is "a wonderful pianist," but one who has played jazz and popular music.
It falls to the renown new tango pianist to coach O'Riley and Ax before him in nuevo tango, but Ziegler is quite game. "I love to teach this style, no?" he says. "The tango style is like jazz style. Both are from the big city. Tango is from Buenos Aires, jazz is from New Orleans, Chicago, New York. It's not easy to translate this kind of feeling, but I try."
Translating a tango quintet into two-piano arrangements is also not easy, since, as Zielger says, "two pianos is always the same sound!
"It's very difficult. I try to open all the voices. Two pianos, it's very confused. Now, I think it's clear. You can hear each voice [of the quintet]: the violin, the bandoneon, the electric guitar, the piano, the bass. Five parts in four hands!"
The task was made more difficult since, in new tango, "there's a lot of fugue, canon, counterpoint elements," Ziegler explains.
Taught the "Piazzolla style" from the master himself, Ziegler explains its difference from traditional tango in that "new tango has more jazzy and more contemporary musical elements."
Ziegler can take credit for some of that. He was, after all, the one who brought jazz to Piazzolla's group. "I introduced improvisation into the quintet," he says, but clarifies that it was not an easy assimilation. The suspect Piazzolla would tell Ziegler in no uncertain terms "that phrase is tango, that phrase is jazz."
Slowly, Ziegler developed new tango improvisation, evolving it from its roots. "Now, it's not jazz," says Ziegler proudly. "It's Buenos Aires phrases with all the feeling from new tango."
Once the young buck of the Piazzolla quintet, the pianist now finds his role reversed--teaching new tango to the young musicians in his own quintet. But, like red wine, a tango player only gets better with age. "I am a Cabernet Sauvignon!" Ziegler laughs.
Along with touring Los Tangueros with O'Riley, Ziegler's quintet is currently recording a disc for BMG with the New York-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. There will be a Piazzolla suite, a Ziegler suite, other pieces from Piazzolla, and two "wonderful old tango melodies from the past arranged for piano and strings." Ziegler's love for tango extends to those written well before Piazzolla redefined the genre.
"I am a musician in the classical way, the tango way, the jazz way . . . I try now all together and shake, no?"
What ties it all together, though, is Ziegler's Argentine heritage. "First for me is the music. But my country is in my blood, my flesh. My country comes out spontaneously in my music."
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