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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > June > 21
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Review: ‘Tango on the Terrace’
Tango set a sophisticated tone for Austin Chamber Music Center’s kick-off concert Friday night for its annual summer festival.
Beautifully played by a five-piece ensemble led by ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann and featuring Grammy-winning bandoneonist Raul Jaurena, the virtuoustic hour-long program of Astor Piazzolla’s urbane and expressive nuevo tango exemplified the smart, forward-thinking turn this chamber festival has taken since Schumann took the helm.
Regarded as one of the world’s most prominent bandoneonists — and a musician who can claim a direct link to Piazzolla before the great composer’s death in 1992 — Jaurena’s masterful playing exemplified tango’s schizophrenic tones and moods. Nervous and edgy, lusty and full-bodied, mournful and nostalgic — Jaurena wrested it out of an instrument that has one the most compellingly unique voices.
Schumann and the ensemble — Korine Fujiwara on violin, Russ Scanlon on electric guitar and Chris Maresh on bass — made spotless work of Piazzolla’s charging rhythms, twisting harmonies and jumpy use of counterpoint. In tango, every instrument can be used as percussion, with string players not just using pizzacato plucking, but making the distinctive ‘chicharra’ sound produced from scraping the strings. Those are tricky techniques that can sound inauthentic in some hands, but both Fujiwara and Maresh pulled it off with aplomb.
Jaurena and the ensemble poured a breathtaking level of energy and passion into the seamless program and that energy flowed off the stage. The audience — a packed house in the intimate auditorium of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — began the rousing cheers about half-way into the concert that were soon joined by ovations.
Nothing like starting a sizzling three-week line-up of concerts with a sizzle.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 11. See www.austinchambermusic.org for information.
