El Encuentro

Argentine composer and bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi’s career dates back to the 1940s. He studied music in Buenos Aires, where he met the great tango innovator Astor Piazzolla; later, he contributed to Gato Barbieri’s landmark 1973 release *Chapter One: Latin America* and has since gone on to work with an impressive roster of jazz musicians. The 2010 live album *El Encuentro* features a four-part sinfonia concertante. The soloists are Saluzzi, cellist Anja Lechner, and tenor saxophonist Félix Saluzzi, Dino’s brother; conductor Jules Buckley leads a large string ensemble drawn from the Metropole Orchestra, a Dutch group. “Plegaria Andina,” which revisits a theme from Saluzzi’s 1988 release, *Andina*, is the only track that features all three soloists. The principal players engage in subtle interplay, with the larger ensemble entering at times, bringing out the drama implicit in the trio’s work. On “Miserere,” the string orchestra sets the stage for the squeezebox’s entry, after which the two are sensitively balanced, including one fiery passage that recalls Saluzzi’s old friend, Piazzolla.