“Well, kid,” said that icon grandfather of our tango proudly. Be poor, but be happy. With those words, Astor Piazzolla blessed his grandson when Pipi returned home after her first and last Marketing class.
He had sat in the classroom, he had heard the teacher recommend reading an economics journal… And had run away certain that his future had nothing to do with the business world, but rather with those bass drums, cymbals and snare drums that he had heard in the popular club at the River stadium and that he had rediscovered in the form of drums.
Since then, Daniel “Pipi” Piazzolla’s passion for music and, above all, for the rhythm of jazz, became a path sprinkled with friendship.
Every Tuesday morning and for twenty-five years, he has gotten together to rehearse to give shape to Escalandrum, that beast that dreamed on a New Year’s Eve night in 1998after toasting with the pianist Nicolás Guerschberg, the double bassist Mariano Sívori and the saxophonists Damián Fogiel, Martín Pantyner and Gustavo Musso, who enthusiastically accepted.
And one more member, Horacio Sarria, would join the adventure from his role as manager. With him, they formed this band of super friends who recorded fifteen albums (two of them at the Beatles’ Abbey Road studios), won the platinum Konex, was nominated for a Grammy and celebrated the recent release of a book about his story.
Dressed in the jacket of the club he loves, Pipi says that Fogiel and Sívori are called “the Poles,” and that they are characterized by the neatness of the room they share during tours; In shorts, Guerschberg remembers the night that his beloved San Lorenzo won the Libertadores, and with the other Cuervo, Sarria, they missed the final, but followed it from the distance of a concert in Brazil. Cups and croissants shine on the dining room table of Martín Pantyrer’s house, located on the border of the Villa Urquiza and Saavedra neighborhoods.
More than sex and drugs, it seems that Argentine jazz is breakfast. But the group’s attitude has a lot of rock, with a slight dose of nerdism: “Jazz is doing whatever you want and not letting anyone tell you what to do,” says Pipi. “But to be able to play that game you have to know the language,” adds Nicolás. What there is not in jazz are industry rules.”
“Jazz is still a niche where only music is prioritized,” says Musso, the most recent pride: he was named ambassador of Selmer, the legendary French brand of wind instruments. “Culturally we are crossed by rock”the charismatic Sarria takes up the floor.
What he says is so true that Guerschberg and Sívori they went to the same music school and at the same time as “the kids” who created Los Piojos. Maybe that’s why they decided to cover it. I’m not a strangerby Charly, and the Shaking of Indio Solari and the Redondos.
“Always with the sound of Escalandrum,” Fogiel clarifies, with aplomb. Everything we do, whether our composition or that of another, has the band’s label.”
“Escalandrum’s path is different from that of other jazz bands: recitals with Elena Roger at the Colón theater, playing at Cosquín Rock, recording two albums at Abbey Road… And everything in this country,” adds Sarria. “Likewise, be careful when you say ‘in this country’ -Pipi interjects-. This country, musically speaking, was always very advanced.”
The croissants circulate, are grabbed, stick on the fingers and melt in the mouth. Some coffee cups are refilled. A trumpet wails from a record in the rehearsal roomwhich waits just a door away.
The thing is that breakfast is stretched between anecdotes, reflections, jokes and laughter. The boys (who are already combing their fifty-year-old gray hair) talk in front of the chronicler and the photographer of Vivabut it is the same as if they were alone: they interrupt each other to add something, correct a detail, make a joke that makes people laugh to Mariano or Gustavo or Nicolás, who seem the most cheerful (although Pipi bursts out laughing every so often), and Horacio wants to add one more piece of information to the conversation, and Damián listens very attentively, and Martín walks around his kitchen, while back there the instruments – such as swords, magic wands or rays of power – wait for the rehearsal to begin once and for all.
But, Until eleven in the morning sharp, the super friends chat. They don’t always talk about music or the history of the band; The topics are more mundane: the problems of the week, if one of the children gets sick, if the card had to be blown up to pay for shipping a new instrument. And the croissants, which according to Pantyrer are one of the secrets to keeping the group together after twenty-five years.
Also a common vision: to build this project leaving egos aside, prioritizing the band over others, raising the flag of friendship as the main engine.
“The key to our continuity is to talk, talk about everything, say what bothers each one of us, and that each one has the possibility of, outside of Escalandrum, doing what they want,” explains Pipi, who in 2022 won a Gardel award for an album he released with his trio formation.
“Are you talking about marriage?” Guerschberg asks and Musso laughs. “And the carrots… -completes Horacio-. In this same house, more than ten years ago, Pipi proposed to us to do Piazzolla’s music.”
From tango to jazz and success
Sarria talks about Piazzolla plays Piazzollathe album that led Escalandrum to surprise the world with the tangos of the legendary Astor in a jazz key. Goodbye Nonino, Libertango, Oblivionare some of the indelible melodies of Argentine identity that our fabulous six recreated to give new life to a music that never stopped multiplying.
And they multiplied their strength with the music of Grandfather Astor, who, in addition to being happy for your grandson’s vocational choicehad also given him his first battery.
An instrument that would give Pipi the superpower to play, by himself, the same as the murga in the River tribunebut also the vision of creating an inseparable group.
“On tours, even though we have free time to do what we want, we look for each other again to do things together”says Sívori.
“Halfway through the recitals in Brazil, which lasted more than a month, Pipi proposed that we take two days to each do what we wanted,” adds Guerschberg. The idea was to oxygenate a little and that we were not so close…”
“That was at noon,” Pipi completes. At three in the afternoon, I was walking without knowing where to go.…And I sent Mariano a message to go have a coffee. And another wrote to another. And the other one… At night we were all together drinking beer.”
In twenty-five years of adventures, there seems to be only one thing more important than friendship and music: family. Are the three pillars where the legend begins to be built of this renewing group of Argentine jazz.
In fact, Daniel Piazzolla Sr., also a musician and keyboardist for Astor’s Electronic Octet, was the producer of the band’s first albums, which today records with the international Warner label.
And it was the grandfather’s legacy that ended up placing this jazz band on a different level than usual: between the murga of a soccer stand, the rock of the kids and the avant-garde tango of a Mar del Plata son of Italiansfamous for its originality and bravery.
The beast grew bigger and bigger, invitations poured in to play at festivals from all over and the audience began to join in, but the group of friends continued to get together every Tuesday for breakfast, talk about good and bad newsto laugh for a while, to share the passion for music.
And why have breakfast? It was Pipi’s idea: “Everyone arrived at any time… One day it occurred to me to tell them that we were meeting earlier to eat some croissants and since then no one has ever been late again.”
According to Pantyrer: “One of the secrets to having played together for twenty-five years are the croissants”. “The ceremony of sharing, of getting together to chat, is surely one of the secrets, although since it is a secret it cannot be revealed either,” explains Mariano Sívori, logically. “Everything is talked about,” says Pipi, in the end.
Just as the last album was discussed: Escalectric, where the piano becomes a keyboard and the double bass becomes an electric bass. The play on words in the title recalls those electric car tracks that kids were fanatic about forty years ago.
The musical proposal: exploring the possibilities of plugged-in jazz, with Musso’s electric saxophone (actually called “ewi”) in guitar hero mode. A bomb of sound that can be enjoyed with the video clip of A la drift, available on YouTube.
But about the paths of the band, its history, the mark they are leaving on Argentine jazzyou can read a lot and exhaustively in the book Escalandrum, between Piazzolla and jazzwhich Fernando Ríos wrote and published by the Gourmet Musical publishing house.
As a complement, the sextet’s 25th birthday will have public and official celebration: There will be two days – Saturday the 28th and Sunday the 29th – in September, at the CCK with free admission.
For now, this preview of superfriends is only possible now, for a few more minutes, because the expected moment is approaching. It will be when they leave the plates on the kitchen table, the cups scattered, the crumbs of what was left of the croissants.
On the way to the rehearsal room, Sarria says goodbye because he has a commitment, Pantyrer closes the door, Guerschberg makes a joke, Sívori he laughs with a sparkling lookFogiel’s glasses shine, Musso seems to be overcome by a wave of happiness,
Pipi Piazzolla rubs her hands. The super friends finally take possession of their instruments. They become professional musicians, playing the scores that have just been handed out and doing it almost perfectly on the first pass.
And there is no difference with breakfast: they continue having fun like kidsonly now they join forces so that the powerful Escalandrum comes to life once again in the air, that beast with six (seven) heads that triumphs by turning friendship into music.
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