WINNER Latin Grammy Best Tango Album 2021

Liner Notes by Mariano Dugatkin
As soon as we got into the car and started the engine, Dad would reach for the cassette. Our days began with this ritual, silently and fervently listening to the bandoneon, as the diverse neighborhood with its colorful characters accompanied us from the car window. After each music piece, he would stop the cassette, taking a deep breath, revealing the enormous pleasure he felt. It was as if he had inhaled the perfume of the most beautiful flower or the aroma of some delicacy generating a caress to the soul. He would smile, and then with an expression of great delight, he would ask me a question or make a comment about what we just heard together. Before pressing “play” for the next piece, Dad never forgot to emphasize in his soft voice, head turned towards me, and eyes almost closed, “taste each piece of music as if you would let a fine chocolate melt in your mouth.”
Those moments of sensitive connection were not generated by just any type of music; it was solely the recordings of Astor Piazzolla. His haunting music became the soundtrack that accompanied me without any interruption since my earliest childhood. Now his magical compositions generate enormous pleasure both when heard and when performed. Piazzolla managed to push the traditional standards of tango by bridging the genre with classical and contemporary music as well as jazz.
In TintoTango Plays Piazzolla we find ourselves riding along a musical journey. Through these musical pieces we travel around neoclassical landscapes, beautiful and delicate melodies fly above us, surrounded by free-flowing solos and colored brushstrokes of extended contemporary techniques. Sparkles of baroque bloom in a fugue as seasoned jazzy harmonies pave the roadway. Our heads shake to upbeat 3+3+2 rhythms windswept by guitar funky grooves along the way. All this adventure is wrapped by the singular passion of Tango.
This album combines the echoes of my home, my identity. TintoTango Plays Piazzolla is now the window that brings me back to those car rides with my old man, and the memories I have of Buenos Aires, the city that nurtured me in the essence of Tango. It also allows me to infuse my own musical gestures into the arrangements, the interpretation of the bandoneon, the artistic production, and the album's musical direction. For TintoTango, the quintet with which we have been performing this music since 2012, this album represents a point of arrival for our unique style and expression of Tango, a starting point for new creations that express our own personal imprint into this genre.
My deepest thanks to all the musicians: Alan, Dino, Matias, Stewart, Alfredo, Martin, and Oscar for fully sharing their talents with such passion, discipline, and dedication. My appreciation for the devotion and expertise of the sound engineers: Yaniv Farber, Ricardo Sanz, Nestor Tinaro, Mariano Bilinkis, and Eric Boulanger, and my special gratitude to Rafa Sardina for his collaboration in the artistic production.
This album is dedicated to all educators who lift music into an art to savor, transmitting its full meaning and magic. My respect and admiration to all of them, and especially to you, dear Dad!!