Album Notes

Adam Rapa: Trumpet
Zoltan Kiss: Trombone
Jacek Obstarczyk: Piano


By Adam Rapa:

Astor Piazzolla has been a tremendous source of inspiration for me. He brilliantly cross-pollinated the disparate worlds of Tango, Jazz and Classical music into a perfectly cohesive, sophisticated and soulful new form of music, which he called "Nuevo Tango". Equally inspiring to me is that he defiantly pursued this vision amid decades of harsh criticism from both traditional Tango and Classical audiences, and persevered through the long, uphill battle to win media and record label support. Developing his musical identity was nothing short of a rebellion, and as history shows, he emerged triumphant and celebrated.

Our goal is to pay tribute to this ingenious musician, while infusing our stylistic identities and telling our own stories. We invite and encourage you to listen to Piazzolla’s original recordings, particularly “The Central Park Concert”. That historic recording includes the versions of “La Muerte del Angel”, “Contrabajissimo” and “Mumuki”, which I painstakingly transcribed note-for-note before creating the arrangements. We stayed true to the original solos, also painstakingly transcribed, and have only taken a few minor liberties.

The other songs on this album, tracks 1,3,5 & 7, are Piazzolla’s “Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas”, or “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”. With this material, we took some major liberties, and had a lot of fun. We walked into the studio with the exact parts written for violin, cello and piano, making changes on the spot and tailoring the music to better fit our instruments and sensibilities. combined with the three pieces mentioned earlier, the result is an album with an enormous range of emotional contrast and a cinematic athmosphere. It has been a life-altering pleasure for me to perform this music with such extraordinary musicians.

I’d like to think that Astor himself would be thrilled to hear this music interpreted with such a fresh perspective. Sadly, we’ll never know, but we certainly hope you’ll find it enjoyable and inspiring.


Recorded at the State Music School of Stanisław Moniuszko in Bielsko Biała, Poland
Recording Engineer: Bartozzi Wojciechowski
Mixing and mastering: Łukasz Kowalski
Cover design: Gabriel Bienczynski
Photographer: Sebastian Stasiuk
Graphic Design: Adam Rapa


Thanks:

This album would not have been possible without the help of Andrzej Kucybała, Director of the State Music School of Stanisław Moniuszko in Bielsko-Biała, Poland; or without the dedication of our heroic sound engineer, Bartozzi Wojciechowski; and Jacek Stolarczyk, Skye Kiss and Krzysztof Kokoszewski. We are also grateful for the wonderful hospitality in Bielsko-Biała from the Obstarczyk family. THANK YOU ALL!