ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
LA CAMORRA: THE SOLITUDE OF PASSIONATE PROVOCATION

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA; FERNANDO SUAREZ PAZ; PABLO ZIEGLER; HORACIO
MALVICINO; HECTOR CONSOLE

Soledad; La Camorra I; La Camorra II; La Camorra III; Fugata; Sur: Los Suenos (South: the Dreams); Sur: Regresso al Amor (South: Regression to Love)

Produced by Kip Hanrahan
Recorded May 1988
European release: October 1989
US release: January 1993
AMCL 1021


{In a review of the live performance of Camorra:} "…Exotic, drenched in weepy romanticism, Piazzolla's nuevo tango as played by his band was a musical highlight of this or any decade... Even the short, explosive sections came across as symphonic work in miniature. It was as perfect as music can get."
—Larry Kelp, Oakland Tribune, 4/26/88

“With a sad little bandoneon, Astor Piazzolla brought the tango screaming and kicking into the 20th century. La Camorra is as brutal as the present and as affectionate as the past."
—Andrew Jones, Montreal Mirror 10/11/90

Producer’s note:
After the wave of critical and public approval and the swelling of satisfaction on our part (the two only peripherally connected) that followed “Tango: Zero Hour”, Malvi and I bet Astor that he couldn’t come up with a new music that was even more beautiful, more passionate and more complex (honest?) than the Magnus Opum. Unnerved and sneering at the challenge (as always), he came up with “La Camorra” suite, which in many ways was an even more spectacular and transcendental piece than we had even hoped for. Although more mercurial (like it’s creator) than TANGO: ZERO HOUR, it more than satisfied the terms of the bet in dealing with beauty, passion and complexity, while relentlessly shifting and gaining in intensity. It also continued, maybe fulfilled, the Piazzolla incline of The Rough Dancer... pointed out by Fernando Gonzalez, playing with and against tango form, making references to tango passed and tango future, and to Piazzolla’s own past and (possible) future, with direct references to bandoneon players that influenced his understanding of the instrument, and of tango itself, while transcending them. Wow! For some reason, probably because it was eclipsed by the continuing (and justified) attention still being given to TANGO: ZERO HOUR, this piece, and this recording, which many of us who were close to him consider to be perhaps his best recording, the best half hour of Piazzolla recorded, got lost and was never given the prominent place it deserved. If fortune has any sense of balance, this record... Oh, fuck, if fortune had any sense of balance, so many things would be different. Right?
—Kip Hanrahan

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