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Guitar Sapiens
The Peruvian guitarist Yuri Juárez sets scenes and drafts landscapes, with sounds put down, like paint, by his expert fingers. He is the guitarist for the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet, for whom he calls up images and implies great distances, providing song after song, whether studio or live, with a visual field uncannily provoked by…
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Tosello Solla Reyes
TOSELLO SOLLA REYES, whom I heard recently at the enchanting new venue in Brooklyn called The Classon, consists of the singer Sofía Tosello, the pianist Emilio Solla (both from Argentina), and the violinist Sergio Reyes (from Guatamala). They return to the same location next month, on April 18, and I urge you not to miss…
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Glamour Tango
Polly Ferman presented her show GLAMOUR TANGO, subtitled “Tango in Feminine Form,” on Monday night at Tango House, using New York based, but international, talent, all of them, appropriately, women. It follows the basic form of a lot of tango shows. There is a live orchestra at the back of the stage, which includes Ayelen…
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Recuerdo tango
RECUERDO TANGO is the second of Mariela Franganillo’s tango shows that I have seen, and like the previous one, Tango Connection: Love Stories, it is distinguished by a feel for dramatic structure that goes beyond that of a revue whose main purpose is to showcase the history and virtuosity of the dance. Franganillo – in…
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Voces del tango
Amidst the exceptional diversity of tango – orchestras, dance shows, milongas, club tango – it is easy to forget the tango song. I do not just mean those singers who front full bands or the passionate and accomplished amateurism of the tango bar. I am also thinking of the tango canción as a sort of…
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Tangolandó
I have said so much about Sofía Tosello as a tango singer, and about the Afro-Peruvian fusion project, Tangolandó, of which she is half, that I assumed last Sunday at the Blue Note that I would snap a picture for social media, promulgate a caption, and let it go at that. But it remains true…
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Pedro Giraudo
It is not just his “big” band. Everything about the music of Pedro Giraudo is vast, enlarged in space, time and ambition, extended to the far-off horizons that the sounds he makes compel us to visualize. His compositions feel as though they traverse landscapes, squeezing whole journeys into musical adventures that set out as from…
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South American Festival
Monday night at the Zinc Bar, the Lilihouse Agency presented the first annual NYC SOUTH AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL. Four hours, four artists and their bands, four from the bar to lighten the heat. First up: Juancho Herrara (top), a Colombian born Venezuelan, with a precise, insistent and sardonic sound, streetwise and urban in tone; his…
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Tangolandó • Fain-Mantega
It was, to be sure, a night of non-standard tango at Joe’s Pub. Tangolandó, fusing tango song with a distinctive Afro-Peruvian rhythm, closed out a program that began with the Dúo Fain-Mantega, consisting of piano and flute, the latter one of the early instruments in tango orchestras, along with the harp and violin, but not…
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Tangolandó
We all know, or think we know, what tango is, and TANGOLANDÓ, just out as a digital release, has some of the best tango singing by one of the best New York based Argentinian artists, Sofía Tosello. Fewer of us know what landó is: it is a driving Afro-Peruvian rhythm that is instantly recognizable once…