Dino Saluzzi

Dino Saluzzi
Diamond Konex Award 2015: Popular Music
Platinum Konex Award 2015: Instrumentalist
Konex Award 2005: Instruments Soloist

He was born on May 20, 1935 in Camposanto, Salta, Argentina. Diamond Konex Award 2015. Konex Award 2005. Composer and bandoneon player. He started playing music thanks to his father, the folklorist Cayetano Saluzzi at the age of 7. He developed his own language with a strong stylistic basis in Northwest Argentina which fades the borders between popular music and the so-called “cultivated” classical music, between composition and improvisation, and among folklore, jazz and tango. His work includes soloist music, chamber music and orchestra. He arrived in Buenos Aires in the mid-1950s, where he took part of Radio El Mundo Stable Orchestra. He worked among others with Alfredo Gobbi, Roberto Caló, Enrique Francini and el Gato Barbieri. He made his first recordings for RCA. His international success as composer and interpreter was achieved hand in hand with Manfred Eicher, founder of the prestigious German record company ECM, with which he has recorded since 1982 up to now and whose artists (Arvo Part, Valentyn Sylvestrov, Tigran Mansurian, among others) branded for life the artistic new generation of the Twentieth Century music. He recorded with Charlie Haden, Marc Johnson, Tomasz Stanko, Anja Lechner, Jon Christensen, Palle Mikkelborn and others. He started recording of his family formation since 1991: Celso, Félix, Matías y José María Saluzzi, whose last edited work is El Valle de la Infancia (2014). He is totally integrated to circuits of international festivals and was applauded in the most prestigious theatres and concert halls of the world. His music was incorporated in films by Jean-Luc Godard, Pedro Almodóvar and others. Documentaries about him were made in North America and Europe. His most recent work is Imágenes (Images, 2015) for solo piano.

Luis Ovsejevich (President of Konex Foundation), Dino Saluzzi, Raúl Lavié (President of the Grand Jury)