Albores

The Argentinian bandoneón maestro Dino Saluzzi is a rara avis. He doesn’t play the nostalgic tango-covers card. Nor, despite hailing from the Andean region of Salta, is he an ethno-folkster. He is most definitely not a member of the populous Piazzolla fan club. But, it is his calm, even sombre manner that perhaps makes him really stand out; there is an essential clamour in the Argentinian soul, but he has shed it, perhaps over the Atlantic while on the way to the next avant-garde free jazz gathering in Munich. Albores is an ‘album of soliloquies,’ that is, solos, and so we would rightly expect his pensive, stirring music to be even more distilled.

Aged 85, Saluzzi still has the groove, even when the subject matter is sorrowful – as on opener ‘Adiós Maestro Kancheli’, or touching and reflective as on ‘Don Caye’, subtitled ‘Variations on the Work of Cayetano Saluzzi’ – his father. Intimate, profound and layered – you’d think Saluzzi had 20 fingers, to get this amount of texture out of a solo squeezebox – it also occasionally allows a glimpse into a more febrile, vulnerable side of his personality. Albores comes after 30 years of working in duos and trio, family bands and small orchestras. But it was the early solo albums Kultrum and Andina that established his reputation outside his homeland and caught the ear of ECM. It deserves to catch new fans at home and abroad.