Vital

In 2010 Fernando Otero received the Latin Grammy Award for Best Classical Album for Vital.

With Vital, Fernando Otero exhibits a chamber sensibility in an oeuvre where the idioms of Latin American, jazz, and European classical musics intertwine. The son of an opera singer and actor, Otero taps the tango of his native Buenos Aires less as a dance form than an attitude of modernist artistic curiosity. Now based in Brooklyn, Otero has found correspondingly diverse collaborators, among them Paquito D’Rivera, the Kronos Quartet, Eddie Gómez, Dave Valentin, the Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Dave Grusin and Quincy Jones. Featuring a palette of bandoneon, guitar, violin, cello, double bass, tenor sax, trumpet, trombone, and drums, Vital ranges from the romantic fullness of “Aguaribay” and “La abundancia”; to the exigent neo-tango sensibility of “Nocturno,” “Globalización,” “Siderata,” and “Danza”; and the eccentric chamber explorations of “Reforma mental,” “La casa vacia,” “Noche iluminada,” and “Fin de revision.” - Michael Stone