This release, a product of the small-scale GuitarSound label in suburban Los Angeles, is part of a series of light crossover discs. Its booklet contains little in the way of information, other than the quite relevant fact that the mother of guitarist
William Wilson was Argentine. Little prepares the listener for what is really a sterling effort. Most of the music is by
Astor Piazzolla, who himself realized late in life that the guitar was suited to the mix of percussiveness and melody in his music.
Wilson uses the guitar's capabilities in a unique way: he strips
Piazzolla's music down to its outlines (no arranger is credited, so it was presumably the guitarist himself), presenting, to use the booklet's words, "not the showy manufactured passion of so much Tango, but rather a side not seen by most. Here there is desperation and loneliness." There are a group of
Piazzolla's greatest hits, interspersed with similar transcriptions of some of the early nationalist keyboard pieces of Alberto Ginastera, ironically (in view of Ginastera's later turn toward the avant-garde) more conservative in their language than the
Piazzolla works and more oriented toward Argentina's traditional "creole" folk music than toward the tango. They make a nice contrast with the tango pieces, and the program is also varied with exquisitely sparse comments in its later stages by a violin, a bass, and a bandoneón. The last of these is played by
Wilson himself, making competent use of the overdub technique. A good offbeat find for
Piazzolla fans and recommended to anyone wanting some moody quiet guitar music for late-night spells of oblivion.