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First of all, I've always been interested in the tango. It's a dance that
I don't know whether in some
past life I was born in Argentina or not, but
the tango music seems to speak very
very dearly to me, and when I first met Martin
I thought "Ah!," an opportunity to learn something more about the tango,
and I immediately asked Martin whether he had any music for tango,
could he get me some Piazzolla when he was going to Argentina, and he said
"yes, yes, you're interested in the tango?" and before long
Tango Etudes arrived in my mailbox and I started looking at them.
They were initially a little hard to read.
There are quite a number of accidentals, in fact,
the page is littered with them!
And I wasn't familiar with the style of his writing, so, it was really interesting
kind of "plowing through" and being content
to go very slowly. But gradually things started falling into place,
and while I was doing these pieces I was
continually writing to Martin, and when a question would arise
I would ask him.
He was incredibly generous with his answers.
He not only wrote quite a lot to me about tango,
but he also sent me all kinds of things:
clips of YouTube, recordings,
you know, old recordings he had of the tango singers.
I began to realize, actually,
as the months went by, that my initial idea
of what the tango was, was really off,
it was slightly wrong.
Yes, some of the flare, and the fun, and the color,
and the intensity of the tango certainly is there,
but as I got more familiar with the old tango, I realized
that there is a wonderful formality to it, that I hadn't realized,
and I guess as I began to understand that,
it was the juxtaposition or interplay between the formality,
between be rigorous rhythm,
and the freedom that's exerted by the singer,
who's constantly pulling and pushing over the accompaniment.
When I look at the tango dance,
I found it an interesting dance, because it's quite...
...it's ***, it's an *** dance, there's a lot of sensuality, an a lot of feeling in it,
yet, there's also a lot of control.
it's a controlled feeling.
I sensed a lot of feeling in Martin's music,
but I also saw very rigorous controls on it.
So, [it's] that exploration of the push and pull
between formal structure, harmonic structure,
that underlies his music so beautifully,
and the overwhelming beauty
of the tango singing line, which seems to find its way
throughout all of his music.
The biggest challenge in performing
Martin's tangos authentically is that I have kind of two authenticities:
there's the old tango, and the new tango,
and both those things inform his music. So...
I'm not sure what the word "authentic"
means in that sense.
Am I being authentic to something from the past?
At the same time, as I find a new way of expressing this through
a language that has some of the tango characteristics
(the harmonic language, and the rhythmic language)
but it's expressed in a different way.
And then of course there's my own feeling about the music, so
I'm pulled in maybe three different ways. I'm always going back to listen to the old tango.
I have become familiar with a lot more of Martin's music
since I started playing this, so I am listening to a lot of that,
and I am paying attention to
what I would like to bring to it.
So, this is not really that different, I guess, from what I
most music, except that there is this
ancient [style] being redone in a different way.
But that, too, is what we do in all music,
so maybe it's essentially fairly similar to what I do in other music.
When I heard the historical recordings,
I felt that I needed to know something about the history of Argentina,
to be quite blunt.
I didn't know a lot. I knew a few things,
I knew pretty much what I had made up in my heart,
but that's not good enough.
So when I saw and heard the old recordings I really had to go back
and have a look.
There was that epic poem ["Martin Fierro"] that Martin introduced me to, that was very
useful, you know, historically,
geographically, what makes up this country:
How does it work? So, hearing the old tangos, really propelled me back there.
Martin had written a really interesting article
in which he had taken the basic beat,
and then shown how the singer moves around that basic beat.
He calls that "tango rubato."
The article was interesting to read,
but then as I tried to understand what that meant on the piano
I had to keep going back to the old singers to see how they did it.
And I realized that the had written it pretty well,
I mean, it's quite nicely notated,
and the more I studied that notation,
I tried to pay attention and got familiar with how his accents,
and his staccatos, and his tenutos, where he puts them,
the easier it became for me.
In a number of ways, tango is similar to jazz.
First of all, in jazz there is a basic beat,
and the stuff going on around the basic beat.
There's a lot of syncopation, in both jazz and tango,
where things are coming off the beat,
before the beat; when they come on the beat,
it's really exciting and wonderful,
but it's those little nuances
where the rhythm comes in a different place that it's really so....
...exciting, and makes it really, really interesting to play in different ways.
This improvisational quality
in the tango, as Martin has written,
[can be found] particularly
in the "Payada," the "Tango,"
and the middle part of the "Milonga,"
where there's quite a lot of poetry, a lot of deep feeling,
and that move very sensually around the beat,
and there's lots of wonderful jazz like that, too.
And I feel that there is enough freedom that I'm happy with it.
I am very happy that I had the freedom
to make suggestions to him pretty much always
when there are things that I can't reach.
I have a fairly small hand and it didn't always reached the kinds of chords [he wanted],
and he would just say "No problem, we'll find another way,"
and he did, and I like that attitude, because it gives you the feeling
you actually are working with the person to create it.
I am a classically-trained pianist.
I've played a lot of new music,
but, you know I was raised in the tradition of the great composers,
and it's interesting for me to see where a composer
might also be inspired by some of the great composers who inspired me.
Two very strong influences here
are Chopin--in some of the music you could just hear
the beautiful nocturne, and the filigree, the lovely lines,
that are just decorative and fall sometimes like little waterfalls,
just beautiful--and Scriabin.
I think Scriabin has a lot to do
with the way Martin uses harmonies,
the resolutions, you know,
sevenths, and tritones, and things that are really edgy.
I find a lot of those
are in Scriabin's music, as well
of course the beginning prelude, which is such a glorious way
to get into the set. Just a wonderful...
I think of an opening out into a grand panorama at the end,
I call it the "Panorama of C Major" in my mind, because that's where we are!
And it's just...it's like going up on a mountain and looking out over
a vast, vast city, the "City of Music,"
or the "City of Buenos Aires," or just "The Greatness of Life."
There's a lot of that "joie de vivre" in this music,
which I think it's great.