What can you tell us about the Máximo Pujol Trio?
It was born in 2010. It is a relatively new project with which I intend to experiment with my music in ensembles other than guitar. The instrumentation here is the typical tango music group of the 1920s: guitar, bandoneon and double bass.
It is essential to know that tango was born in the suburbs, in the areas that we call here “orillas” (edges), that is to say, the edges of the city, where the city was mixed with the countryside, germinating the so-called “cultura orillera” (edge culture). In those “orillas” were the marginal people, the poorest and most humble workers. And it was there that the Europeans settled during the substantial immigration at the beginning of the 20th century. They came mainly as Italians and Germans, who brought with them the bandoneon: a small instrument that served as an organ in poor churches where there was no money for a large pipe organ. The first tango groups, consisting of a guitar, a flute (or bandoneon) and a double bass, emerged in that brothel environment. And, in this way, this type of trio organically took shape, which is still easy to put together for the stage.
I have been fortunate to have two first-class musicians in tango: Eleonora Ferreyra (bandoneon) and Daniel Falasca (double bass). We are currently doing a lot of things. We have already recorded two albums, and we finished the third one by the end of 2019; we are waiting to release it. My goal is to escape the traditional guitar audience because I get the impression that sometimes we guitarists play for ourselves. It seems that even today, the guitar is that intruder who comes to the auditorium to play the Aranjuez Concerto or Villa-Lobos Concerto, whereas that’s the place of the piano or the violin. And I wanted to get out of that and get closer to the tango public. I cannot complain about the result; we have done very well in the famous Buenos Aires Tango Festival and European tour. The strategy was to target another kind of audience, and it worked.
Website: maximopujol.com
