interview by Marco Buso
Martin Delgado— San Telmo Lounge
interview by Marco Buso
San Telmo Lounge is a one of its kind Argentinian electrotango musical project, combining elements of tango, jazz, rock, and electronica in a unique and smooth way. We at Modern Tango World had the pleasure to talk with guitarist and composer Martin Delgado, founder and leader of the band, about his experience.
MTW: Martin, first of all thanks for being here and talking a bit about San Telmo Lounge with Modern Tango World.
Martin: Thanks to you Marco! It’ ss my pleasure.
MTW: Let’ s start from scratch. We would like to know something about your musical background.
Martin: Oh well. I fell in love with music as a teenager, when I enjoyed to tears listening to Sting and The Police’ s music besides of classic rock, mainly from the 70s. At fifteen, I was moved by the influence of artists like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, and yes, Jethro Tull, EL & P, John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola, I started playing guitar and studying ear training and musical theory. After high school, I continued my musical studies at the University of Litoral in Santa Fe, where I graduated as Professor of Guitar and Composition in Traditional Classic Music. In that period, I got more involved into jazz and the work of composors, such as Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Olivier Messiaen. I began studying classical guitar as well, playing Abel Carlevaro arrangements of Astor Piazzolla’ s compositions among the others. This was my very first introduction to tango. Today I still get inspiration from classic albums from the 70s. I listen to all kinds of music. But, I always end up amazed by classic artists such as Miles Davis, Astor Piazzolla, Antônio Jobim, Anibal Troilo, and the Beatles.
After graduation in 2001, I continued studying guitar and harmony at the New Jazz School in New York City and attended many courses in Argentina and abroad in music production, tango, jazz interpretation and private lessons with Rodolfo Mederos, Manfred Swazrskopf, Marcelo Braga Saralegui, Pablo Lopez Ruiz, Dante Grela, Julian Peralta, Claudio Lluan, Gabriel Data, Pablo Deluca, Turco Josami and Cacho Hussein among others.
MTW: How was the San Telmo Lounge project born? How did you meet, how did you start working on it?
Martin: In 2001, I moved to New York city to study jazz. There I realized that my musical identity made me different from the american jazz guitarist. For some reason, my sound had something that had to do with tango. When I came back from the USA, I told myself: You got to do something with tango. On the other hand I couldn’ t see myself playing in a traditional tango orchestra. In those years, there were not as much tango orchestras and musicians as there are today. I decided to build a project based on every kind of music I liked— rock, jazz, tango, combined with the electronica that I heard so much of in the USA. I did this without even knowing that there was a growing electrotango movement. It wasn’ t until I started building the first San Telmo Lounge demos did I find out about Bajofondo and thw other electrotango groups.
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