"Tristezas de un Doble A" - live

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 11 Jun 2012 5:45 pm

For those of you who may be interested, here is a live recording of my arrangement of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla's "Tristezas de un Doble A" (Sadness of a Double A) by the group I put together two weeks ago for my residency at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY. Piazzolla wrote this piece about the end of his relationship with the singer Amelita Baltar, hence the "Doble A" (double A) - Astor and Amelita. It was one of Piazzolla's favorite compositions.

This was recorded May 30, 2012. The performance is not perfect, and we could have used more rehearsal time, but the musicians really put their heart into this rather difficult piece. They are:

Michael Formanek - bass
Ryan Sawyer - drums
Steve Swell - trombone
Darius Jones - alto saxophone
Yours Truly - pedal steel guitar.

I hope you enjoy this recording: http://picosong.com/wLXH/

Lynn Fargo · Post by **Lynn Fargo** » 11 Jun 2012 8:06 pm

Loved it, Susan. It's like you're Jonah, delving deep into the blood and guts of this whale of an instrument, not just admiring it from the outside.

After listening to this piece, I had to revisit your website to learn more about you. Very interesting, indeed. What a road you have traveled and travel still. God bless you.

Ron Castle · Post by **Ron Castle** » 12 Jun 2012 4:08 am

Beautiful playing Susan.great ensemble too.
Is this a fully composed piece? or were there improvised solos?

Rich Peterson · Post by **Rich Peterson** » 12 Jun 2012 4:40 am

Thank you for sharing this with us. I'm impressed by the blend of your PSG with either of the horns while the other soloes. It sounds like a larger ensemble than it is.

Was this composed for PSG, or are you taking the place of a different instrument?

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 12 Jun 2012 12:21 pm

Thank you, Lyn, Ron, and Rich. I'm glad that you liked our rendition of this song.

Lynn, the whale is quite an accurate metaphor for our instrument; in my case, I think it's the instrument that has swallowed me, and I'm just trying to make sense of life inside the belly. A strange road, music and life - one that we all travel each in our own way.

Ron, this is a fully composed piece which I transcribed, then arranged, for the most part, by ear, but there were improvised solos. The musicians who performed this with me are some of the best improvisers I've ever encountered, so I wanted to make sure they could do what they were best at (though the song also required a lot of reading). Usually, when they strayed from what I had written, I thought it sounded rather nice. The steel guitar intro was a note-for-note transcription of a string quartet. When the other instruments came in, my part was improvised and theirs were scored. The saxophone played pretty much what was written until 3:39 where he started improvising. Towards the end, the two horns and I improvised together. Then we went back into the same form as the intro, and the chords at the very end were something I wrote. The bass player read through the entire piece, and the drummer made up his own parts.

Rich, I think the pedal steel combined with horns can indeed be a rich and large sound. I think the control we have over attack and sustain probably has a lot to do with that. As far as I know, Astor Piazzolla never wrote for the steel guitar. He died about twenty years ago. During the late 80's I had the good fortune to see him and his quintet perform in Houston, and it changed my life - not necessarily in a good way, because the need I felt to play his music became quite an obsession. It's beautiful though difficult music. Much of it is virtuosic, and the tango feel is not an easy one to get. In this piece, I'm playing at times the part of the bandoneon, at other times a violin, guitar, piano, or cello - whatever it takes to fill out the song.

My apologies for the long-winded response.

Rich Peterson · Post by **Rich Peterson** » 13 Jun 2012 9:59 am

Susan, are you able to play those complex harmonies with a "standard" copedent?

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 13 Jun 2012 1:19 pm

Is it possible to play the harmonies in this piece with a standard copedent? I've always been of the mindset that one can play anything on any copedent and any instrument, so my own first impulse would be to try and then see what might work. And if it didn't turn out, then I would have learned something that may prove useful in another situation.

Playing this (I'm assuming that you're talking about the intro) on a standard E9th would be pretty difficult because it doesn't have the low strings. On a standard C6th tuning, it would very well be possible depending on the pedals and knee levers. The bass line moves around a bit, so you'd need a lot of versatility to get the different notes on the low strings. I use a combination of barred and open strings to play the introduction.

However, if you don't have a lot of versatility in the lower strings, you can always have the bass player play the low part.

Rick Schmidt · Post by **Rick Schmidt** » 13 Jun 2012 10:49 pm

That is beautiful Susan! Thanks!

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 16 Jun 2012 1:54 pm

Thank you, Rick!

Karen Sarkisian · Post by **Karen Sarkisian** » 16 Jun 2012 2:37 pm

Susan I love it ! Really looking forward to meeting you on the 23rd at the Lilly Pad. btw sent you a pm

Nick Powers · Post by **Nick Powers** » 16 Jun 2012 8:14 pm

if i'm not mistaken, a doble a is also a particular type (or fingering system?) of bandoneon.

Susan Alcorn (deceased) · Post by **Susan Alcorn (deceased)** » 17 Jun 2012 8:44 am

You're right, Nick. The "Doble A" is a respected brand of bandoneon, and, especially in later recordings, Piazzolla prefaced the melody with long improvisations that summoned the spirit of some of the great bandoneonists who had preceded him. According to Horacio Ferrer, Piazzolla's librettist and close confidant, Tristezas de un Doble A was "Astor and Amelita, Amelita and Astor wrapped in the sadness of a fight like the ones they used to have in those days". If you listen to the recording starting at 3:00, you can hear the back and forth that might have been his musical response to those fights. But all of Piazzolla's music is (at least to my ears) passionate in this way, and you can hear these themes in a lot of his pieces - he was a complicated person (as are we all, I suppose). Horacio Ferrer is, at heart, a poet with a poet's sensibilities. Piazzolla was a composer and a musician. So, who knows, maybe it's a play on words, or perhaps it's a bit of both.

Nick Powers · Post by **Nick Powers** » 19 Jun 2012 10:19 pm

thank you for the information, Susan. i first heard "doble a" in the movie "el ultimo bandoneon".
thought it was a fingering system or something.
anyway, i highly recommend the movie: good story, well told, marvelous music, & some pretty good looks at buenos aires.