Dino Saluzzi

Argentine jazz bandoneonist

Timoteo "Dino" Saluzzi (born 20 May 1935) is an Argentinian bandoneon player. He is the son of Cayetano Saluzzi and the father of guitarist José Maria Saluzzi.

Timoteo "Dino" Saluzzi was born in Campo Santo, Salta Province, Argentina. He began playing the bandoneon as a child. His father Cayetano Saluzzi was influential in his involvement with music. For much of his youth, Saluzzi lived in Buenos Aires. Dino has been playing the bandoneon since his childhood. Other than his father, he was influenced by Salta musicians such as Cuchi Leguizamón, and by the lyrical strain of the tango of Francisco de Caro and Agustín Bardi. Dino described the vividness of his musical sketches as "an imaginary return" to the little towns and villages of his childhood. As a youth in Buenos Aires, Dino played with the Radio El Mundo orchestra.

He played in orchestras professionally while also touring with smaller, sometimes jazz oriented ensembles, developing a personal style that made him a leading bandoneonist in Argentine folklore and avant garde music (especially since Astor Piazzolla did not participate in projects other than his own). His record career did not start until the 1970s, along with Gato Barbieri, when he released a couple of lyricism albums under the name of Gaucho. Over this decade, he worked on many tours in South America and specially in Japan, but always associated to other names, such as Mariano Mores or Enrique Mario Franchini. Through word of mouth publicity (mostly from expatriate musicians), Saluzzi was invited to several European music festivals. He landed a contract with the ECM label. Several records have resulted, including Kultrum, 1983. From the beginning of the 1980s onwards, there were collaborations with European and American jazz musicians including Charlie Haden, Tomasz Stańko, Charlie Mariano, Palle Danielsson, and Al Di Meola. ECM brought Saluzzi together with Charlie Haden, Palle Mikkelborg and Pierre Favre for Once upon a Time – Far Away in the South, and subsequently with Enrico Rava for Volver. Rava had worked extensively in Argentina, and Haden's sympathy for Latin American music was well known; furthermore Palle Mikkelborg and Dino Saluzzi had worked together productively in George Gruntz's band: there was a common ground on which an artistic exchange of ideas could take place. Saluzzi later played with Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and the Rava Saluzzi Quintet also toured. In 1991, Saluzzi recorded an album with his brothers Felix and Celso and his son José María on guitar, kicking off his "family project", which has since toured many countries. Mojotoro drew upon the full range of South American music: tango, folk, cantina music, candombe, and the milonga music of La Pampa Province. Anja Lechner and Saluzzi have toured widely as a duo, and US jazz magazine DownBeat declared their album Ojos Negros the "Album of the Year" on their "Best of 2007" list. In 2015, Saluzzi won the Diamond Konex Award, one of the most prestigious awards given in Argentina, as the most important musician of the last decade in the country. Saluzzi symphonic works were presented with Anja Lechner and Metropole Orkest at Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, in February 2009.

1991: Pop Pop (Warner Bros.)