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"I have to tell the most absolute truth. I could make it a story of angels, but that would not be the true story.
Mine is one of devils mixed with abgels, and some miserliness."
Astor Piazzolla
A Memoir
Natalio Gorin
Translated, annotated, and expanded by Fernando Gonzalez
This is what Astor Piazzolla stressed to his friend, Natalio Gorin, while the two sat together in Punta del Este,
Uruguay, collaborating on Piazzolla's memoir. Through telling interviews with Piazzolla,
Gorin has completed an interesting and truthful account of Piazzolla's amazing life.
Piazzolla is best known for changing the face of traditional tango music by moving the sound of tango away
from the dance floor, adding elements of cool jazz, and rejecting its tendencies towards sentimentality and bouts
of morbid self-pity. Many tango traditionalists were greatly offended when Piazzolla developed his
"new tango." Piazzolla stood by his compositions and later commented, "I broke the old molds: that's why they
attacked me and why I had to defend myself, saying at times a word too many."
Fernando Gonzalez best conveys why Piazzolla's music was and always will be inspiring, "In Piazzolla
nothing was ever lost, neither his father's tango records nor the Bach he heard through the door as a child;
neither the exact counterpoint and fugue he learned with Nadia Boulanger nor the cool swing of Gerry
Mulligan or the style of Pedro Laurenz."
Natalio Gorin has been a journalist - with a focus on sports reporting - for more than thirty years. He has worked for
the daily Clarin, the largest newspaper in Argentina; the sports magazine Goles; the entertainment monthly
Radiolandia 2000; and El Grâfico, a prestigious sports weekly for which he spent time as managing editor. His passion
for music, especially for tango and most especially for Astor Piazzolla's music, led him into extensive investigations of
the composer's life and work. They met in 1971 and were personal friends until Piazzolla's death in 1992. Gorin
resides in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and frequently travels to give lectures and presentations on Piazzolla and his music.
Translator and annotator Fernando Gonzalez is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and a columnist for
Down Beat magazine. He was arts and culture writer and pop music critic for The Miami Herald and jazz and world
music critic for The Boston Globe, and for many years reported on Astor Piazzolla's career.
Contact: Publicity
Available from Amadeus Press, an imprint of Timber Press, Inc., 133 S.W. Second Ave., Suite 450,
Portland, Oregon 97204-3527.
Telephone: (503) 227-2878, (800) 327-5680.
Fax: (503) 227-3070.
E-mail:publicity@amadeuspress.com
www.amadeuspress.com
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