I was incredibly fortunate to work with the Tango-Nuevo group, Norteño this summer. The group was recreating the music from the recording Summit – a recording of Astor Piazzolla’s music that featured Gerry Mulligan.
Norteño is a a five piece group (bandoneon, piano, guitar, violin and bass), who enlarged their ensemble to add a string quartet, and baritone saxophone (myself).
The music was gorgeous! Pierre-Paul Provencher arranged the music for the group and everybody had standout moments on the program.
For myself, it was a daunting idea – filling Gerry Mulligan’s role. Any time that I have to step into a legend’s role, I feel a certain sense of responsibility to research. That included listening to the recording, but also material from that time period, in this case, the 1970’s from both Astor Piazzolla and Gerry Mulligan’s discographies.
As the concerts progressed over the summer, I felt that I could put my own stamp on the music. I was able to take more liberties with the melodies, and stretch out much further on the improvised sections. In turn, I felt my sound becoming part of the whole, instead of distinctly a soloist. It was so inspiring, and far too much fun to weave in and out of sections of unison with the bandoneon or cello into flights of improvisation.
Another discovery from performing with a string quartet regularly is that I love the sound of a string quartet. I have performed with string quartets for a few projects in a row, and now I always want to have one available – maybe I’ll have to write some new material.
Now that the touring is over, I hope that we can continue performing this music. The project has so many tonal colours to it, and over the summer we had amazing audiences of all ages who saw and heard the project.
I am incredibly grateful to have received the call to work with this wonderful group of musicians, performing this beautiful music.
Low Eh! 
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