Summit (album)

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Summit
Studio album by Gerry Mulligan & Astor Piazzolla

Publication
(s)

1974

Label (s) Erre TV / Festival, Tropical Music

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

Jazz Tango Nuevo

Title (number)

8th

running time

37:42

occupation
  • Violin : Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli
  • plus string ensemble under the direction of Astor Piazzolla

production

Aldo Pagani, Mario Fattori, Fabio Belotti

Studio (s)

Mondial Sound Studio, Milan

Summit was the joint project of Astor Piazzolla and Gerry Mulligan . In Europe originally called Tango Nuevo published the work also appeared under the name Reunion Cumbre and 1974 .

"From 1940 until today I have had the most terrible problems, just because of a folk music called Tango ..."

Astor Piazzolla

Piazzolla, who is now regarded as the great innovator of Tango Argentino , met Gerry Mulligan during his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1954 , who had traveled with his octet to the Salon du Jazz Festival . The ideas and suggestions that arose when they performed together for the first time, however, were not to be implemented musically until 1974 at the Rassegna International Festival in Venice and the joint Summit record . At Boulanger's suggestion, Piazzolla had found his identity in the Tango Argentino (and not in European styles) in the intervening period - and had begun to fundamentally renew it. The album, released in Europe under the name Tango Nuevo , gave the music of Piazzolla and his successors their name, even if the music, whose mood is largely characterized by Mulligan's expressive baritone saxophone, stylistically has to be assigned to jazz rather than Tango Argentino. Audiences, press, musicians and dancers from the field of Tango Argentino were divided and Piazzolla's international breakthrough as one of the great composers of Tango Argentino would not come until several years later (at the time of the Argentine military dictatorship).

Piazzolla and Mulligan met in Milan in autumn 1974 to record the record with an Italian studio ensemble. They were in the recording studio from September 24th to 26th and from October 1st to 4th, 1974, where Tonino Paolillo was the sound engineer . In between they played with a smaller cast in Venice, where the composition Close Your Eyes was recorded and broadcast on Italian television on September 28th .

Track list

  1. 20 Years Ago - 6:26
  2. Close Your Eyes And Listen - 4:32
  3. Years Of Solitude - 4:07
  4. Deus Xango - 3:45
  5. 20 Years After - 4:10
  6. Aire De Buenos Aires - 4:37
  7. Reminiscence - 6:30
  8. Summit - 3:35

With the exception of Aire De Buenos Aires , which Mulligan contributed, all compositions are by Piazzolla, who also wrote all the arrangements .

effect

From left: Aldo Pagani (producer), Tullio De Piscopo , Filippo Daccó, Angel "Pocho" Gatti, Astor Piazzolla , Gerry Mulligan , Pino Presti , Alberto Baldan Bembo, Amelita Baltar , Tonino Paolillo

The Italian newspaper La Opinion wrote on December 24, 1974:

“Summit” […] is not only the most wonderful or one of Mulligan long overdue albums. It is also an endorsement that Piazzolla continues to be a creator of incorruptible personality, in whatever context or city. The shameful thing is that he cannot do that in his own country.

The album, which was released in 1975 as Tango Nuevo by WEA Records on the Atlantic label, soon became a sales success beyond the actual jazz and tango circles; it contributed to the popularization of Tango Nuevo. To this day it has lost none of its enchantingly peculiar fascination and has been repeatedly published under different titles. It is considered a timeless classic.

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