El Viejo Caminante Dino Saluzzi, Jacob Young, José María Saluzzi

• 1 La Ciudad de los Aires Buenos 06:14
• 2 Northern Sun 05:35
• 3 Quiet March 05:25
• 4 Buenos Aires 1950 04:10
• 5 Mi hijo y Yo 05:17
• 6 Tiempos de ausencias 04:26
• 7 Someday My Prince Will Come 08:11
• 8 Y amo a su hermano 07:59
• 9 El Viejo Caminante 05:22
• 10 Dino Is Here 05:49
• 11 Old House 06:35
• 12 My One and Only Love 06:24
• Total Runtime 01:11:27

Info for El Viejo Caminante

Two guitars gently envelop the uniquely evocative bandoneon of Dino Saluzzi on El Viejo Caminante, The Old Wanderer. Here, the Argentinean father and son team of Dino and José Maria Saluzzi are joined by Norway’s Jacob Young, in an album of musical depth and great charm. “It fills me with joy”, says Dino Saluzzi, delighting in this recording’s sonic blend, with José on classical guitar and Jacob on Telecaster and acoustic steel-string guitar. “Jacob and José are very good together. They have different sounds, different visions, but when it comes to the artistic output there is something beautiful happening.” The elder Saluzzi, who turned 90 in May, has lost none of his youthful enthusiasm for artistic collaboration, or for venturing beyond stylistic borders: “I always strive to make contact with new ideas outside my normal element,” he says, still seeking out contexts that offer, as he puts it, “potential for both musical and human growth.”

The association flowered after Jacob Young and José Saluzzi played duo concerts in Argentina in 2022. Dino Saluzzi, in the audience for a Buenos Aires gig, suggested that Jacob should return the following year for a trio recording project. Honoured to be invited to play with the great bandoneonist, Young was doubly pleased to be asked to bring material to the session. His compositional contributions include the portrait piece “Dino Is Here”, which offers tribute and moves toward the rubato world of tango, where the notion of pulse is elastic, and atmospheres are often closer to chamber music than to jazz. In the tune’s central modal section, guitars serve as a layered rhythmical foundation, “to give Dino space to comment on top, and be free.”

Dino’s own compositions include some reconsiderations of early works. Long time followers of his ECM history, for instance, will remember “Tiempos de ausencias” (Times of Absence) from Volver, Saluzzi’s spirited 1986 collaboration with Enrico Rava. “Y amo a su hermano”, meanwhile, was in the repertoire of a short-lived trio with Charlie Mariano and Wolfgang Dauner. And though it’s tempting to think of Dino as the old wanderer of the title track – not least because it is performed solo here – “El Viejo Caminante” is a vintage Saluzzi tune, one of his vivid character sketches, first played by the bandoneon master long ago. Dino sees the present album as a collection of music from different times and places that touches upon tango, Argentinean folk music and jazz and makes of these allusions something fresh. Jazz reference, in fact, is more specific this time around with the inclusion of a couple of standards, “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “My One and Only Love”, as well as “Northern Sun” a tune by Karin Krog. With its wide-ranging repertoire, its choice of compositions and unusual ensemble sound El Viejo Caminante feels, as José Saluzzi observes, “special, and very organic.” A piece by José, “La Ciudad de los Aires Buenos” invites the listener into the album’s particular sound-world, and has the feeling of an overture, offering insight into the regions about to be explored…

Dino’s “Buenos Aires 1950” offers flashbacks to the era when Saluzzi was a junior member of the Orquesta de Radio El Mundo. “This bandoneon has been with me for years. Sometimes it makes me cry, sometimes it speaks to me, but it never finishes telling me everything,” Dino reflected when speaking to the audience at a trio concert shortly before the recording. In this particular constellation, the two guitarists embellish the fragments of memory, and develop more of the story, which is both nostalgic and with enduring lessons for the present.

Dino Saluzzi, bandoneon
Jacob Young, acoustic steel-string guitar, electric guitar
José María Saluzzi, classical guitar

No biography found.

Booklet for El Viejo Caminante