{"id":156,"date":"2022-04-12T00:48:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T03:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retamoza.efece.ar\/?page_id=156"},"modified":"2026-06-22T16:45:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:45:50","slug":"la-musica-de-astor-piazzolla-gerry-mulligan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.retamoza.com.ar\/en\/la-musica-de-astor-piazzolla-gerry-mulligan\/","title":{"rendered":"The music of Astor Piazzolla & Gerry Mulligan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The music of Astor Piazzolla & Gerry Mulligan<\/h2>

The unforgettable album by Astor Piazzolla and Gerry Mulligan, Reuni\u00f3n Cumbre (Summit), from 1974, synthesized the meeting of two of the most creative genres of the 20th century: tango and jazz. This historic encounter was an inevitable guide for the Argentine saxophonist Jorge Retamoza throughout his more than 25 years of work.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the 50th anniversary of the release of Reuni\u00f3n Cumbre is celebrated, and Jorge Retamoza and his group bring this historic recording, which has been influential on generations of musicians and has had a profound resonance with audiences from different backgrounds, back into the present.<\/p>\n

Jorge Retamoza decides to revive this encounter between the two artists in homage to this seminal recording that foreshadowed, with great effectiveness, the link between tango and jazz, something little explored at the time of the album's release but of effective relevance worldwide.<\/p>\n

Together with guitarist Pablo Mart\u00ednez, they have reconstructed the scores of the album Reuni\u00f3n Cumbre, based on the recording transcriptions, adapting the arrangements to a sextet format to allow the full melodic nuances of the various works to be heard. Retamoza and Mart\u00ednez have respected the general forms of the themes, the melodies and counterpoints, and the overall soundscape, but there is room for their personal interpretations of this music in the solos and improvisations that permeate each piece of this program. It's worth noting that at the time of the recording, only Piazzolla played tango in that session, Mulligan contributed his distinctive sound, especially to the slower pieces, and the members of the RAI orchestra, who accompanied with efficiency and professionalism, had a very limited understanding of tango vocabulary at that time. The music of Jorge Retamoza's Sextet sounds much more like tango, more canyengue, with more substance, revitalizing the intrinsic beauty of the melodies on the album.<\/p>\n

Piazzolla and Mulligan rarely performed this material live, giving only a handful of concerts in Italy, France, Barcelona, \u200b\u200band Brazil, and not much else. In fact, they never played together in Argentina, and the recording has seldom been used by other artists who perform Piazzolla's music. The Sextet brings this work back into the spotlight\u2014a work that brought the worlds of tango and jazz together for the first time in such a clear and beautiful way, back in 1974.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

<\/div>
<\/div>