SLAMCD510 Various Artists – Open Dreams / Sueños Abiertos

With the help and support of Argentine musicians, radio contacts, press and friends, George Haslam set out to compile a selection of some of the exciting contemporary Argentine jazz, from La Plata and Buenos Aires to Patagonia, Mendoza, San Luis on an amazing tour of discovery.

‘Sueños Abiertos’ contains 70 minutes of music across 12 tracks by 12 different groups. Each track is completely different from the previous but all unmistakably Argentine. Probably the strongest overall flavour is that of the array of different rhythms employed in the music.

“A sampler providing a tour d’horizon of contemporary Argentine jazz, Open Dreams begins with a perfect example of how local rhythms and, more generally, indigenous musical traditions, can be filtered successfully though the jazz sensibility to produce music that is at once immediately recognisable as peculiar to its country of origin and, at the same time, unmistakably jazz-based. Pianist Alejandro Rodríguez’s ‘Candombe en Tricota’ combines formal grace and elegance with controlled improvisation in trio music of winsome subtlety and considerable textural and dynamic variety, and (like, say, the work of Michel Camilo or Danilo Perez or Hilton Ruiz) is so naturally infused with both Latin and jazz that the result is a wholly uncontrived, organic blend of the two. While other artists’ music (the free solo piano of Ruben Ferrero, the trumpet-led lissom fusion of the Ricardo Nolé Trio and Juan Cruz Urquiza, the wafting saxophone/guitar sound of the Alejandro Aranda Cuarteto) is less overtly Argentine, there are also the number of bands using local instruments and rhythms that might be found anywhere in the jazz world these days, from Norway to South Africa and all points between. Highlights include the dry, throaty alto of Sebastián Cavallaro and the intensely rhythmic, powerfully imaginative solo piano of Roi Maciaz, but the album as a whole is what really impresses, providing, courtesy of the richness and variety it contains, proof that jazz is arguably more a state of mind than an easily defined musical tradition.” – Chris Parker, Vortex

Album compiled by George Haslam & Pablo Ledesma
Mastered at Monstersound Studio, Oxford on 8th September 2005 by Eric Smith & George Haslam.

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