TANGO AND SNOW • Carmen Maret (fl); Andrew Bergeron (gtr) • BLUE GRIFFIN BGR 229 (44:41)
MARET Tango Destroyer. Adequate Conditions Blues. Pajaro Rojo Santo. The Lemon Smugglers. Cumparsita Cats. Whiplash Rides. MARET/BERGERON Algonquin Vals. BERGERON Tango and Snow. Full Long Night’s Moon Through the Rain
The husband-and-wife team of Andrew Bergeron and Carmen Maret form a multitalented flute and guitar duo that specializes in tango music. Bergeron has a master’s degree in composition and teaches guitar at Grand Valley State University and two other colleges in Michigan. Maret is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s Kansas City Conservatory of Music; she holds a master’s in flute performance and a graduate degree in ethnomusicology from Michigan State University. Currently, she works at the Grand Rapids Tango Community as a teacher and musician. Bergeron and Maret, playing together as the Folias Flute and Guitar Duo, have performed across North America. They have released four compact discs, three on the Blue Griffin label and one on White Pine. Since both of them are classically trained musicians, the addition of tango music and its variations to their repertoire has markedly increased their value as composers. They are technically proficient instrumentalists who can play and compose idiomatic Latin American music as well as more traditional classical pieces that describe the scenery of their home state of Michigan.
The title Tango Destroyer relates to a name that Astor Piazzolla gave himself. Maret based her piece on harmonies heard in “Café 1930,” the second movement of Piazzolla’s History of Tango. Adequate Conditions Blues is an essay in music about the mental equilibrium earned by living through the ice and snow of a particularly cold Michigan winter. It is possible that Algonquin Vals was written during the same winter. At that time the couple was staying in a traditional dwelling called a yurt in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. Their living conditions were definitely less than adequate, but this music, like many works written by impoverished musicians of the past, turns privation into art.
Maret’s compositions—Pajaro Rojo Santo, The Lemon Smugglers, Cumparsita Cats, and Whiplash Rides—are all interesting pieces that can certainly be enjoyed by almost any listener who likes either classical or Latin American music. Bergeron’s title piece, Tango and Snow, was written in the nuevo tango style espoused by Piazzolla, which could incorporate jazz and classical influences. During the 1950s, he brought new harmonic structures to traditional tango composition. Bergeron works with multiple strands of music in constructing his fascinating 21st-century compositions.
Bergeron’s nature-inspired works evoke completely different sentiments. Cross-country skiing on a moonlit but occasionally rainy December evening in Canada is the inspiration for totally charming, poetic music that brings to mind the sound and spirit of a stormy night. It is quite different from the tangos, and it shows the versatility of the musicians who compose in both veins.
Engineer Sergei Kvitko produces a clear-sounding disc with ambiance that approaches that of a small concert hall. I hope some readers will dance to this disc and put the results on the net, where we can all see them.
FANFARE: Maria Nockin
Jan/Feb 2012
Thanks Robert Bao and MSU for the shout out in the 2012 winter issue of the Alumni Magazine.
Download the PDF of the MSU Alumni Magazine Feature here.
by TODD GORMAN
for American Record Guide
Jan/Feb 2012
Folias Duo—Blue Griffin 229—47 minutes
This is a set of pieces written either by the flutist, Carmen Maret, or the guitarist, Andrew Bergeron; one was co-written. Sources of inspiration are Latin American influences and the outdoors, hence the title combining the two. Besides the obvious, Piazzolla, this music is informed by the tangos of Juan d’Arienzo and Angel Villoldo, the playing of Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and singers Mercedes Sosa and Susana Baca. The overall effect is a creative, post-Piazzolla exploration of the tango territory in an expanded sense. This release belongs next to the Cavatina Duo’s Piazzolla album (Bridge 9330; Nov/Dec 2010); if you don’t already have it, you need to get both!
Although the lower range of the flute is not avoided, these flute parts inherit the convention of using the instrument’s top octave and a half, up to the very highest notes. In Latin American combos, where the flute could easily be overpowered by other instruments, this was the range that offered the most carrying power. I winced a couple times at the risk of extreme high notes, but they were executed perfectly and with confidence, which is the only way to pull them off. The opening track, ‘Tango Destroyer’, poses a different problem for the flutist as a moto perpetuo toccata with almost nowhere to breathe. Again, despite my rising anxiety the flutist kept going, making it to the end. This highly capable flute playing and degree of daring in self written music reminded me of the flutist-composers Gary Schocker and Rhonda Larson.
The five-movement suite Through the Rain by guitarist Andrew Bergeron reminds me of Sunleif Rasmussen’s work Dancing Raindrops (last issue). It portrays a storm using extended techniques in the flute and scordatura and drumming in the guitar (the tuning is E-B-C#-G-A#-E). The dramatic opening of IV, ‘Down-pour and Release’, cedes to microtonal trills as the storm settles down. The final movement, ‘After the Rain’, uses the soothing sound of alto flute juxtaposed with much higher tremolo “dripping” notes in the guitar.
For some reason, the ‘Adequate Conditions Blues’ is an excuse for showers of a different sort: showers of notes from the flute. This so-called blues has the most virtuosic noodling this side of the Woodwind Quintet in C (c.1830) by oboist-composer Henri Brod. The 5/4 introduction to Full Long Nights Moon, is a nice touch of originality in what could otherwise be a more banal New-Age excursion.
Overall, I did find quite a bit to enjoy in both the dance-inspired and nature-inspired pieces. The pickup is fairly close but not too close, and the sound is clear and dry without sterility. There is more resonance on one track with piccolo, ‘The Sound of Rain’. Maret plays Pearl flutes, and plays them well. She has a solid, no nonsense sound and plays with virtually no vibrato. Her sound is a degree removed from the very tight style of playing among flute players from Cuba south. Bergeron plays classical and flamenco guitars with a great range of energy and sensitivity.
View the Inside of the Tango and Snow Here
This month our home cooking was featured in Solace Magazine for an article on good food movements in Grand Rapids. Author Kristin Tennant and photographer Ryan Pavlovich captured the intersection of our cooking, travel, and music to a tee.
“Between music, food, and marriage, Carmen Maret and Andrew Bergeron have enough projects to keep them happily occupied for a lifetime.”
Read the full article here
(View Spring and Summer 2011, then Turn to Page 52!)
Check out the article by Juliet Bennett Rylah in the December 2009 issue of the Grand Rapids Magazine!
Photo by Jim Gebben