Tango maestro Pablo Ziegler - the Buenos Aires-born pianist and composer who helped shape the modern tango - brings home a Grammy for his latest release, Jazz Tango, for Best Latin Jazz Album.
On Jazz Tango, Pablo Ziegler presents his US-based trio featuring bandoneonist Hector del Curto and guitarist Claudio Ragazzi. They play seven soulful, virtuosic originals by Ziegler, along with three nuevo tango standards by Astor Piazzolla, whose pianist Ziegler was for many years.
Writes Latin Jazz Net: "Pablo Ziegler is a giant among men and, like his illustrious musical ancestor Astor Piazzolla, he worships at the altar of originality, creating furiously beautiful arabesques whose black dots leap off the page as he (Mr Ziegler) commands them to pirouette and fly airborne into the rarefied realm of his art."
This Grammy victory follows a win for Best Tango Album at the 2005 Latin Grammys, along with three additional nominations from 2008 to 2016. It also represents a historic first for the genre of nuevo tango, as the first major Grammy win for a nuevo tango recording.
Find an official trailer for the Pablo Ziegler Trio, two exceptional recent reviews, and excerpts from the album below.
Lemon Wire
"With Pablo Ziegler's new CD, "Jazz Tango," the tango lives and breathes - a common theme in Ziegler's work; to ordinary people, there seems only so much a person can do with a tango. On this release, the music moves as if it possessed its own blood and limbs, and renders the tango a sinewy and electric thing, a move that impresses old and new fans alike."
Jazz Weekly
"Filled with complex moves, sensuality and drama as the strings are tapped, strummed and spliced. The dynamics rise and fall like a wave on "La Fundicion" and Old World charms are in abundance on "Elegante Canyenguito." Ziegler is misty-eyed on "Milonga Del Adios" and the team plays a game of Peek-A-Boo on the clever "Blues Porteno.""