Pablo Ziegler: Music and Beyond Welcomes Back the Piazzolla Pianist

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This summer, composer and Piazzolla quintet pianist Pablo Ziegler is bringing experimental Argentine tango to Ottawa.

On July 4, Ziegler will host the Opening Gala: Homage to Piazzolla concert for his third Music and Beyond season. It’s his first time as the festival’s gala performer, and his first time back since the start of the pandemic.

But he’s kept busy with international performances in the meantime. During lockdowns, Ziegler and his wife Masae Shiwa started experimenting as a piano duo before visiting Japan, Brazil, and Argentina for duet concerts, with New York lined up later this year.

Their concert at Music and Beyond will include some original experimental works; Ziegler and Shiwa will emulate a quintet with only two pianos.

“Sometimes my left hand can be double bass, but then I might be playing, on the right hand, bandoneon or guitar parts,” Shiwa said. “You get to analyze every part of the music. That gives you more depth to interpretation.”

Pablo Ziegler (Credit: Shigeto Imura)

Ziegler will mainly perform works by Astor Piazzolla—Michelangelo 70, Oblivion, Introducción al Ángel—in honour of the musician who invited him to play in his quintet in the late 1970s.

He said their first meeting was a big surprise; a member of Piazzolla’s quintet supposedly recommended Ziegler after hearing him perform at a concert. But the real shocker to Ziegler was Piazzolla’s justification for choosing him as their new pianist. “I asked: ‘Why are you calling me? I’m not a tango player.’ He said: ‘It’s for that (exact) reason I’m calling you.’”

A pianist since he was four years old, Ziegler was already performing with several classical and jazz trios—as well as composing for many artists—by the time Piazzolla approached him. It was that dual-genre expertise and his compositional flexibility that impressed the fellow Argentinian.

Over the 10 years they worked together, Ziegler said it felt like Piazzolla took him in as a surrogate son and encouraged Ziegler to start composing music for himself instead of only for others.

“I put my brain on the music of Buenos Aires. I tried to do something, and I did it,” Ziegler said. “Right now, I have a lot of my own compositions with different memories I have from my city.”

Ziegler said he inspired Piazzolla in turn. He was the first quintet member who had the ensemble leader’s permission to improvise during performances. Piazzolla never improvised, and he otherwise kept a rigid structure for his quintet’s score. But the senior musician seemed to hone that skill and experiment after Ziegler arrived, he said.

By composing his own music and continuing to perform Piazzolla’s songs, Ziegler hopes to pay tribute to a musician whose support and uplifting attitude changed his life.

“He was very tender with me,” he said. “He helped me a lot, and he was very happy because with that last quintet we made some kind of mark in Buenos Aires.”