Released to celebrate the Argentinean bandoneon master's 75th birthday, El Encuentro (The Encounter) reveals new aspects of Dino Saluzzi's boundless creativity. It's his first live album for ECM (recorded at Amsterdam's renowned Muziekgebouw) and features new orchestral music with outstanding soloists - Dino himself, German cellist Anja Lechner, and Dino's brother Felix Saluzzi on saxophone.

The recording also marks the ECM debut of Holland's Metropole Orchestra and their gifted young conductor Jules Buckley. The flowing music, with strings shadowing the movement of the bandoneon, extends the spirit of Dino's "storytelling" solo works such as Andina (to which the piece "Plegaria Andina" makes reference). Dino says, "a lot can be told using few elements. The music should not be too rational. It has to brim with innocence."

The cast of soloists draws on long playing associations. Dino and Felix Saluzzi have many decades of shared musical experience. They can be heard together in Dino's "family band" projects Mojotoro and Juan Condori. Dino and Anja Lechner collaborated on the critically-acclaimed Kultrum project with the Rosamunde Quartet and on numerous duo concerts since then. Their collaborative album Ojos Negros was a major success both artistically and commercially.

Personnel: Dino Saluzzi: (bandoneon), Anja Lechner (cello), Felix Saluzzi (tenor saxophone), The Metropole Orchestra, conducted by Jules Buckley