In Tucumán (Argentina), where Alberto Rojo is from, they call him "Leandro" (for Da Vinci). Alberto Rojo paints, sings, plays music, and is a professor of Quantum Physics at Oakland University in Ann Arbor Michigan. He also tours a lot. He just finished a European tour with Mercedes Sosa where he was her "all orchestra". Alberto will be here at El Taller on Saturday June 21st at 8pm to play and show us his songs, some of which our Spanish students are currently learning.
From Alberto's web site:(www.albertorojo.com) Alberto Rojo was born in Tucumán, Argentina. He started playing the piano at the age of six and picked up the guitar as a teenager.
From 1980 to 1982 created played with Gaudeamus, a band with a medieval and renaissance music repertoire. Then, in 1982 he decided to study Physics and moved to Bariloche. From then on he alternated his creative interest between music and science. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics in 1990 and moved to the United States. During that period he also intensively practiced the guitar and wrote pieces that were later performed by (among others) Mercedes Sosa, Argentinean rock idol Charly García, Víctor Villadangos, Dorian recording artist Berta Rojas and Carmina Cannavino and are part of the curricula of Latin American music schools.
Most recently, his second album, Para Mi Sombra, received rave reviews in Argentina and was chosen as one of the best five folkloric albums of 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine of Argentina. In 2004 his song “Chacarera del Fuego” from the album was anthologized in the album A Rough Guide to the Music of Argentina from the English label World Music Network.
In April 2002 Alberto was invited by Grammy winner and legendary singer Mercedes Sosa to participate in her concert at Massey Hall in Toronto and in Teatro el Círculo in Rosario, Argentina. Sosa has publicly praised Alberto’s exquisite songwriting (she declared herself his “number one fan”) and has included several of Alberto’s songs in her repertoire. In 2005 Mercedes invited Alberto to record two duos in her album Corazón Libre; and in December 2005, she invited him to play two songs in Tucumán in a outdoor concert that attracted a crowd of 15,000 and was broadcast on national TV.
