ARTISTIC DIRECTOR GUSTAVO MOZZI

He is a composer, guitarist, artistic producer and teacher. His music reflects the traces of different musical traditions of the Río de la Plata area: tango, milonga, murga, creole genres and music of European descent.

He has performed internationally with different projects at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, the official stage of the Carnival of Venice, Piazza San Marco; and La Salle Pleyel in Paris. He has won two Latin Grammy awards together with Gustavo Santaolalla for their artistic production of Café de los Maestros. Since 2008, he has been Artistic Director of Tango Buenos Aires Festival and World Cup.

His musical career started in 1979, touring around Argentina with the band MIA (Músicos Independientes Asociados). In 1983, he recorded an album with them, Membrillar, which journeys through traditional folk music genres. In the mid ‘80s, he founded Mozzi y La Cuerda, a band boasting a tango sound typical of the Rio de la Plata area, with which he won the First Latin American Biennale for Young Art. In 1990, he founded the ensemble Mozzi y El Murgón, where he brings his personal approach to the universe of the murga, a traditional genre typical of Buenos Aires carnivals. The album Carnavales porteños and many live performances give an account of this period. He participated in Sergio Renán’s film El sueño de los héroes, as a consultant in the visual and musical reconstruction of a period carnival. In parallel, he recorded and performed with the musician Juan Tata Cedrón, and arranged the music of his album El botánico, released in France. And together with bassoonist Andrea Merenzon, he was part of Camerata Tango and played his own pieces at the Salón Dorado of Teatro Colón.

He has composed music for theater and worked together with Las Gambas al Ajillo, a company born in the alternative theater circuit that became a point of reference in the local scene.

In 1998, he recorded Los ojos de la noche, an instrumental album blending academic language and expressions of the urban folklore. He performed this album together with the Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Wien, in Vienna (Austria), at Porgy & Bess (2003) and the Konzerthaus (2004).

In 2005, he recorded a new instrumental album, Matiné, which brings together remarkable Argentine musicians of different backgrounds. In the same year, he founded the ensemble Orquesta Matiné. In 2006, he was the protagonist of a massive murga rave at Piazza San Marco, as part of the Carnival of Venice’s main events.

Between 2005 and 2009, he performed his music together with the Dutch ensemble Quinteto Tango Extremo, touring several cities in Europe and Asia. With them, he recorded the album Carnaval de Buenos Aires, released and distributed in Holland. Also, he served as a guest faculty member at the Conservatory of Rotterdam.

He wrote the music for Ajedrez Viviente Tanguero, with costume design by visual artist Nora Iniesta and choreography by Silvana Grill. He composed the music for Pista Tango, a circus show with live orchestra which was presented as a work in progress at the Festival d’Ile de France 2009. He took over the musical production of and wrote the original music for Anima Buenos Aires, an animated film with drawings by Caloi, Nine, Jáuregui and the Faivre brothers, directed by María Victoria Ramírez.

At the request of Marisa Monte, he wrote the string arrangements for “El pañuelito blanco” (Filiberto-Coria Peñaloza), which the singer premiered at Teatro Bradesco in San Pablo – accompanied by Dadi Carvalho, Gustavo Santaolalla and Mozzi himself – and included in her album O que você quer saber de verdade.

In 2011, the Orquesta Matiné appeared on the End of the Year Special of the French-German television channel Arte Canal, a show that was artistically produced Mozzi.

As artistic producer, he is related to some of the major names in popular Argentine music.

As artistic director of the record collection BAM/MBA, supported by the Department of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires, he produced Adolfo Abalos, Julio Pane, the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires, Nicolás Ledesma, Glorias Porteñas, among many others. In 1999, he blended music with the spirit of soccer in a project that brought together a group of artists with a common passion for the traditional soccer team Racing Club: Leopoldo Federico, Atilio Stampone, Eladia Bláquez and Rubén Juaréz, among others. They participated on the album La Acadé, with some original music and artistic production by Mozzi (with Gustavo Margulies).

He is the artistic producer, together with Gustavo Santaolalla, of the project Café de los Maestros. Since 2003, the project has gathered the major figures of 1940s and ‘50s tango: Mariano Mores, Leopoldo Federico, Horacio Salgán, Alberto Podestá, Virginia Luque, among others.

The double album Café de los Maestros was performed live at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and received two Latin Grammys and two Gardel Music Awards in the categories “Best Tango Album – Band or Orchestra” and “Best Production of the Year.”

The film Café de los Maestros was premiered at Berlin Film Festival (2008), and the band performed live at the Salle Pleyel and the Palais Royal in Paris, and later toured Brazil, Belgium, China, Oman and Singapur.

Also, along with Gustavo Santaolalla, he produced in 2004 the record La criolla, which marked 93-year-old legendary singer Nelly Omar’s return to the studio. Moreover, he took over the artistic production of a traditional version of Bajofondo’s international hit “Pa’bailar.”

Since 1988, he has served as Music Department Coordinator at the Centro Rojas of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where he has also taught. He directed the Centro Cultural Agronomía, also part of the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the City Government (1999-2001). He was Artistic Director of the Office of Music of the Buenos Aires City Government (2001-2003). He was the founder and coordinator of the program “Discográficas de Buenos Aires” (2003-2005). Since 2008, he has served as Artistic Director of Tango Buenos Aires Festival and Dance World Cup of the Buenos Aires City Government.

In 2013 he released Estuario, an album of original songs created from an orchestral mindset, taking the genres of the region as a starting point.