Search - Fernando Huergo :: Provinciano

Argentina is the land of the tango. But it has also birthed an impressive number of jazz musicians, who have used that country s most famous artistic export while spotlighting other not-so-well-known idioms. Pianist/composer Lalo Schifrin introduced the chacarera to the world in his famous Mission Impossible theme. Arranger Eduardo Del Barrio and composer Guillermo Klein have also featured that dance rhythm in their work. Now Argentine bassist/composer/bandleader/educator Fernando Huergo contributes his own brand of Jazz Argentino on his Sunnyside debut Provinciano.

Backed by an all-world ensemble featuring tenor/soprano saxophonist Andrew Rathburn, Mika Pohjola, flutist Yulia Musayelyan, and drummer Franco Pinna, Huergo who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jaco Pastorius seeks to broaden to the scope of jazz-influenced music of the Americas to include the contributions of his homeland.

...Hispanic composers have recently been experimenting with the rhythms and traditional music of their native countries, such as Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina, adding a new dimension to Latin Jazz, he writes from the CD liner notes. Technological developments over the past several decades have made information accessible in ways that were unthinkable fifteen years ago ... as we can reach almost any work of a band or composer from the farthest regions of the planet. The Internet has helped musicians share their work with a potential global audience, and has provided them with access to the music of akin composers. By inspiring the creation of a virtual scene of musicians with a shared aesthetic that enforces the development of their work, the Web has profoundly affected the almost simultaneous conception of Jazz Argentino in many parts of the world.

On this CD Huergo unveils Afro-Indian folkloric idioms from all four corners of Argentina rarely heard north of the Equator. The title track, Chacarera del Carancho (adapted from Abalos Brothers La Chacarera del Rancho ), El Chupacabras, La Luz del Norte, swing with various chacarera inventions and dimensions that include malambo, the Blue Note era, Lee Morgan/Herbie Hancock sound, and swing overtones. The tango rears its elegant head on the Astor Piazzolla-laced A Mil, and on Huergo s poetic solo, El Dia que me Quieras. The milonga, the tango s mournful precursor, provides the appropriate sorrowful setting on The Cost of War, and the intoxicating zamba soaked Vida, is contrasted by the martial, indigenous carnavalito paces of Bochis, and the funky, Chamane-coded Instinto Matero. The one non-Huergo selection, John Coltrane s vidala embered Lonnie s Lament, from his LP Crescent, sings with tragic pathos.

Born in Cordoba in 1968, Huergo graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1992, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Bass Department. He is also an instructor at Tufts University. He s performed with Danilo Perez, Victor Mendoza, Dave Liebman, The Jingo Trio, Tom Harrell, Billy Pierce, Claudio Roditi, David Sanchez, Kenny Werner, Mike Stern, and George Garzone, and Horacio Hernandez. He also recorded on fellow Argentinean (and Sunnyside label mate) Guillermo Klein s Los Guachos Vol. II-III recordings (Sunnyside, 1999/2002). Huergo s CD s as a leader include: Living These Times (Brownstone 1998), Jazz Argentino (Fresh Sound World Jazz, 2002), and Live at the ReggataBar (Blue Moon, 2004).

Which brings us to Provinciano, Fernando Huergo s masterful CD, which reaches out from the provinces to the planet. The ambition of Jazz Argentinean musicians [is] to go beyond traditions, and to create music that, while being essentially Argentinean, transcends to the universal.