21 June 2005 Pablo Ziegler Quartet; Edmar Castaneda

Sometimes what makes a performance so alluring is watching the absolute transformation of the person in front of you, luminous under stage lights and lost in his own world, music filling his ears before sharing it with you, far away in the surrounding darkness. Edmar, with his easy smile, smallish frame, fingers plucking, sliding, silencing his harp strings, cuts the brilliance of his flourishes with resounding quiet. The memory of its sound echoes, while the space fills with a voluminous hush in the split infinite second before the next voice emerges, tantalizing and fragrant.

And then, there are musicians like Pablo: seemingly unreadable, he sits heavily at the piano, betrayed only by the discreet smile hovering about his eyes and lips. His greying hair gives him a certain gravity, lightened by the soft curls that frame his face. Striking a rhythm with the flat of his hand on the side of the piano, he begins ‘Hopscotch.’ His dexterous fingers manipulate sound with surgical precision, emitting earthy, sensual voices that float before melting into the richness of the melodies permeating the air, chilled by iced drinks clinking occasionally into the darkness. His voice is slightly gravelly in between songs, as he tells us the next will be a melody he wrote, ‘Milonga del Viento’ –Milonga of the Wind. I love his accent, the way he pronounces the ‘H’ in honor – ‘it is an honor to be here at the Blue Note,’ he says.

In the moment of listening in complete stillness, sound becomes tactile, imbued with fingers made of sinuous melodies that beckon, cajole, and charm you out of reality into magical plush depth and ethereal delicacy. Bliss comes wrapped in blue-stained notes and an Astor Piazzola tango re-invoked with piano, harp, double bass, electric guitar, and percussion. Trace this transient instant with the breath of an exhaled sigh while falling from intoxicating heights.