Juan Hitters: Horacio Lavandera at The Blue Whale

lunes, 1 de junio de 2015

Horacio Lavandera at The Blue Whale

Tonight Horacio Lavandera will be plain Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto at the opening of the brand new concert hall in Buenos Aires, called The Blue Whale. This amazing venue has been acoustically designed and provides a crystal clear presentation of instruments very suitable for medium and small ensembles. Though world famous and a classic, the main hall at Teatro Colón was never intended for baroque music and chamber ensembles, as was designed with opera and symphonic orchestras in mind. So this new venue is very welcome. And to open it the prestigious Horacio Lavandera has been selected. He hired me to portray him in this space which, to be honest, was still being under constructions when these pictures were taken. Therefore, I could not make full use of the location and had to shoot under very low light conditions. He was very satisfied with the results, anyway. Good! I had met him during the recording sessions of Dino Saluzzi's piano music for ECM, at the Rainbow Studio in Oslo.

What's on the CD player this week

New film about Architect César Pelli

What's on the CD player this week

"Sound City": real to reel. Dave Grohl has put together many wonderful musicians and directed a documentary film called Sound City. The movie is about the sheer joy of playing and recording plain (or not so plain) rock music starring Chris Goss, Joshua Homme, Rupert Neve, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Rick Rubin and Paul Mc Cartney to name just a few. The soundtrack is a true marvel, similar in a way to Slash's first solo album. It has been on steady rotation since I came back from Sydney.

Keith Jarrett at Teatro Colon

Tonight Keith Jarrett is improvising on the piano at Teatro Colon. It has been nearly three decades since I listened to "The Köln Concert" for the first time. The experience was revealing. It is probably one of the albums I have enjoyed the most. I clearly remember once driving with friends along a deserted road someplace in Uruguay while listening to Keith play the old Bösendorfer in Cologne. The compact cassette sounded awful, but I could do nothing but wonder: listening to this beautiful music recorded many years ago, in a far away city, while driving through this lonely country, was magic! Well, life has been good to me, and gave me the opportunity of contributing to ECM on Keith Jarrett's "Testament" album cover, a recording of two improvised concerts in Paris and London. This was a couple of years ago. Tonight I will be listening to the man himself, no state of the art recording or crappy cassette, just an incredible musician playing the piano. You bet I am looking forward to this experience.