Years of Solitude

The collaboration between Piazzolla and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan produced a dialogue between two complete musical worlds — Buenos Aires tango and American jazz cool — that neither man could have achieved alone. "Years of Solitude" (a nod, surely, to García Márquez) moves slowly, the two instruments breathing around each other with the careful attentiveness of people who have survived much and learned to speak slowly. Mulligan's baritone saxophone has an earthy warmth that complements the bandoneon's more cutting timbre; together they create a middle register, a shared space. The harmonic language is unhurried, the silences between phrases as weighted as the notes themselves. This is music for contemplating long time, accumulated experience, the way solitude shapes a person into someone particular. Pour something amber-colored, let the afternoon go.