Fernando Otero

Pagina de Buenos Aires

About this Album

Pagina de Buenos Aires showcases Argentinean composer and pianist Fernando Otero's original material in a variety of formats, with piano, violin, cello, acoustic bass, bandoneon, and a 25-piece orchestral ensemble.

Since Otero was a teenager, his compositions have blended the indigenous sounds of his native country with classical, jazz, pop, and rock music. As he recalls, a guitar instructor “showed me the possibility of developing something with the roots of tango, the sound of tango—not necessarily tango itself, but the music I heard as a child, the sound in the streets. I started working with a bandoneon player and tried my first project, which I called X Tango.”

While he’s remained largely unknown to the world at large, Otero has, for some years now, been a well-kept secret among jazz and classical insiders. His CD Plan has circulated among fellow musicians and attracted them to his recitals. Label-mates Kronos Quartet commissioned a piece from him, which will be premiered this season.

Otero has composed and performed with several orchestras and chamber groups in the U.S. and Mexico and has also written for ballet and theatre companies. He has collaborated with one-time Bill Evans sideman Eddie Gomez, flutist Dave Valentin, and pianist/film composer Dave Grusin, among others; he’s lately been sitting in with Chico O’Farrill’s Jazz Orchestra during their Sunday night residency at New York City’s Birdland; and, most recently, he’s joined clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera on stage and in the studio. Pagina de Buenos Aires is is Nonesuch label debut.