Album Notes

Buenos Aires-born Bernardo Monk began studying and playing music in 1990.

He was fourteen years old.

Everyone in his immediate family was a musician, so he too followed the family path.

His first saxophone instructors were Eduardo De Luca, Victor Skorupski and Carlos Lastra.

On a daily basis, Monk was hearing and absorbing the haunting music of 19th Century Argentina known as the tango.

In sync with this, he fell in love with American jazz, as heard on many household records and the bands in which his two older brothers played.

The music of Charlie Parker, Paquito D'Rivera and Branford Marsalis enthralled him.

Soon the enthusiastic young artist Bernardo Monk was becoming a skilled performer on soprano and alto saxophones.

Some of the Argentine musicians he would work with later are Mariano Otero, Gillespy, Lapo Gesaghi, Volpini Band and Sebastian Monk.

By 1993, Monk won First Prize as a soloist in the Expoadolescente National Arts Competition and by 2000, he had graduated from The Contemporary Music School in Buenos Aires.

Then he won an International Scholarship to study at the world famous Berklee College of Music, in Boston where he expanded his instrumental palette to include baritone sax, flute and clarinet.

At Berklee he continued to stand out, winning two more competitions: the prestigious Charlie Parker Scholarship and the Berklee Woodwinds Department Achievement Award.

Having studied intensively under the guidance of such top jazz players as Joe Lovano, Hal Crook, Jerry Bergonzi, Ed Tomassi, George Garzone, and Phil Wilson, Monk graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2003 with a Major in Jazz Performance.

During his time at Berklee, Monk also had the opportunity to perform, tour and/or record with such excellent groups as bassist Oscar Stagnaro's Peru Mestizo, The Tito Puente, Jr.

Orchestra, Sol y Canto, Puerto Rican percussionist Equie Castrillo's Latin Big Band and The Ryles Jazz Orchestra as well as ensembles led by artists such as Panamanian vocalist Patricia Elena Vlieg Quintero, Columbian singer/songwriter Marta Gomez, and Argentinean pianist/composer Pablo Ablanedo.

In 2002, Bernardo Monk and his wife, tango dancer Fernanda Cajide created MassTango, a unique and electrifying ensemble which presents the distinctive musical form called tango.

The name of the group is a play on the abbreviation for Massachusetts and also the Spanish word for "more" .

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"más." But Monk doesn't stop with the tango.

He melds traditional tango musical figures and instruments [such as violin, piano, double bass, guitar and bandoneón] along with the not-so-traditional tango instruments and jazz sounds of the saxophone creating a wonderful and challenging, yet entertaining new artistic direction.

In 2004, Bernardo and pianist Octavio Brunetti won First Prize in the Best Tango Duo category at the New York City International Tango Competition for professional instrumentalists.

Also in 2004, Bernardo released his first album, Estación Buenos Aires.

He performed and recorded with such prestigious tango musicians as Néstor Marconi, Daniel Binelli, and Leonardo Ferreyra.

In 2006 Bernardo Monk released his second CD: Ponele la firma.

The new CD captures the full essence of his unique ability to unite the musical motifs of tango and jazz.