By Miguel Bronfman

For the Herald

JAZZ IN TOWN

BAU Records is an independent local label founded in 2001 by guitarist, composer and producer Fernando Tarrés. Since its creation, BAU has been constantly enlarging its catalogue, releasing some of the best and most daring modern music produced in the country. Here we offer a glimpse of its most recent albums, some of them closer to a jazz sound, others to a contemporary aesthetic beyond any possible categorization.

49 minutos-Nager & Tolosa Piano Duo.

Though it bears strong reminiscences of Argentine popular and folk traditions, this original album certainly belongs to that realm of music which escapes any stylistic definition. Germán Nager and Juan Carlos Tolosa, both from the Province of Córdoba –where the album was recorded in July, 2007- make their recording debut as a piano duet in this work which brims with musical ideas from beginning to end, permanently defying the listener to follow them in a permanent burst of intriguing dialogues and counter-dialogues.

The album opens and closes with well known songs from the vernacular repertoire: Si llega a ser tucumana, a traditional zamba by "Cuchi" Leguizamón, and Cobián..s and Cadicamo..s nostalgic tango Niebla del Riachuelo. In between them, three originals by Náger and Tolosa and a piece by Titi Rivarola, a friend of theirs, complete the record.

However, the album as a whole can also be listened as an exposition of different themes and atmospheres, with different movements woven together through Náger..s  and Tolosa..s particular approach, which is simply… demolishing. Of course, in their demolishing process they build together beautiful, deep and moving, and at times perturbing music, out of tiny melodic or harmonic structures. Si llega a ser tucuma, and Niebla del Riachuelo, for instance, are imperceptibly recognizable; in the latter, for example, which last fifteen minutes, only after six minutes of playing some traces of the original melody are offered to listener, just as a little hint about the tune they are working with.

Though these are common procedures in the contemporary music field, this album stands apart because Náger and Tolosa make truly interesting music while deconstructing the melodies they work with, and because their interaction is enormously rich and fruitful, enabling them to move together even when they seem to take completely opposite paths within the same piece. 

For sure, this is not an easy-listening album. Jazz, academic music, abstraction, folk music and tango, serialism and tinges of John Cage and Astor Piazzolla are present –though disguised, metabolized and transformed- in this ruminative and penetrating album that demands listening after listening to really grasp –and to really enjoy- its complete dimension. Amidst so much trash music produced these days, Náger and Tolosa certainly make a great contribution to keep music as a true and deep artistic form.