Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents PABLO ASLAN 3/26-27

Recorded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, featuring a superb ensemble of tango and jazz musicians, "Tango Grill," the new recording by Argentine-born, New York-based bassist Pablo Aslan, is a brilliant follow up to "Buenos Aires Tango Standards" (Zoho Music, 2007). The bassist will perform in Jazz at Lincoln Center in a performance featuring Nicolas Ledesma and Abel Rogatini on piano, Pablo Agri on violin, Gustavo Bergalli on trumpet, Daniel Piazzolla on drums, and Michael Zisman and Raul Jaurena on bandoneon.

A pioneer and leading figure in tango jazz, a growing new style that blends the repertoire, instrumentation and vocabulary of tango with elements of jazz, Aslan set out here to reinvent twelve 20th century tango classics on the fly. The result is tradition with a razor's edge.

The very title, "Tango Grill," alludes to la parrilla, which translates literally as the grill, but it's also the bandstand term tango musicians use for improvised arrangements.

Aslan's group in "Tango Grill" includes established tango masters such as bandoneón player Nestor Marconi (the bandoneón is the melancholy sounding button squeezebox that is the quintessential tango instrument) and young pianist Nicolas Ledesma. But also drummer Daniel Piazzolla, the grandson of the late New Tango master Astor Piazzolla, and himself a leading figure in tango jazz as both player and bandleader, and trumpeter, composer and bandleader Gustavo Bergalli, an early believer in tango jazz.

The music in "Tango Grill" is not a fusion, in which the total is usually less than the sum of the parts, but rather, it suggests a musical bilingualism. For these musicians, this is lived-in music, the sum of a lifetime in both tango dancehalls and jazz clubs.

Pablo Aslan has performed and recorded with Grammy Award Winners Shakira, Joe Lovano, Gary Burton, Paquito D'Rivera, Lalo Schifrin, Pablo Ziegler, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is performed at Frederick P. Rose Hall, located Broadway at 60th Street. For tickets and more information http://www.jalc.org/.