Olegario Díaz makes music meets art

This review is dedicated to Eu

Perhaps you are wondering what did I want to imply with that title. Isn’t music a form of art itself? Don’t get me wrong: I’m talking about a music record made by the great venezuelan pianist Olegario Díaz to pay homage to his favorite artists. Kinetics artists, if we’d like to be more accurate.

Olegario Díaz is one of the finest musicians inside –and outside- Venezuela. He has been known better as an amazing jazz pianist but, in this occasion, he assumes the challenge of making electronic music –playing a Rhodes keyboard instead of a piano-, within the genres of down-tempo and chill-out.

This ambitious project is called ChillArt Tribute (2008). The titles of each track is one of the –last- names of the kinetics artists for whom Díaz pays tribute to. Carlos Cruz Diez, Jesús Soto, Alejandro Subero, Alejandro Otero and Gego are among the venezuelan kinetic artists, but Yakov Agam, Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian and Joan Miró have also a track with their names on it.

As a featured artist, the excellent guitar player Juan Ángel Esquivel plays in a good portion of the pieces in the record. His guitar sounds exquisite in the two most up-tempo pieces of ChillArt Tribute: Pancho-Sancho and A. Otero. His performance sounds pleasantly appropiate.

(I haven’t quite considered this next thing until now, but it’d seem perfect to listen to this record through an iPod while staring at a modern art exhibition inside a modern art gallery.)

A lot of jazz musicians have been considered as artists way too conservatives. Many of them doesn’t approve at all “new music” within the electronic kind. ChillArt Tribute is a genuine proof that, musicians like Olegario Díaz, embraces the new sounds of the beginning of the current millennium. Olegario Díaz à la musique electronique sounds great. This says a lot of his huge talent and versatility as a performer and composer.

One of the other attributes of this record is the name in the credits of its mixing and mastering: German Landaeta, one of the top sound engineers of Venezuela. One of the reasons that could explain why ChillArt Tribute sounds so good is due to the addition of the best music and technical talent of Venezuela, indeed.

Inside the CD cover there’s only a brief introduction that tells a little bit about the artists. However, in my opinion, it’d have been great if there were an explanation by the composer on the relationship between his tracks and the work of the artist correspondent. It’d be nice to know that. (Blame it on my curiosity).

Anyway, wasn’t art meant to be interpreted in a free way by the one who is staring at it? Or, in this particular case, by the one who is listening to it?

In that case, let’s put that assignment on both of our ears.

And on our eyes too, of course.


You can buy this CD at any Esperanto store