Argentinian bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi is one of the most important figures in contemporary South American music. Dino Saluzzi is unparalleled. That is another reason why last year ECM records brought out the album Imágenes, with Saluzzi’s compositions for piano. Dino’s style is absolutely unique and deviates from Piazzolla’s style because he comes from Campo Santo, an isolated village in the north of Argentina. When his father put a bandoneon for the first times on his hands the message must have been clear “Go ahead and start playing tango, but don’t forget to put in it the influence of the indians from our region and the imprint that breath taking beauty of the nature has left on us”. Dino Saluzzi was born in Campo Santo in North Argentina and led his first group at the age of 14. He began to play professionally while studying in Buenos Aires. His ECM discography was launched in 1982 with the solo album Kultrum, a spontaneous example of the bandoneonist's art as "storyteller": this marked the first of many "imaginary returns" to the little towns and villages of his childhood. From the beginning of the 1980s Saluzzi made numerous collaborations with European and American jazz musicians – amongst those initiated by ECM were meetings with Charlie Haden, Palle Mikkelborg and Pierre Favre (Once Upon A Time - Far Away In The South), with Enrico Rava (Volver), with Tomasz Stanko and John Surman (on Stanko's From The Green Hill album). But the family band has always existed alongside such projects. It was first documented on ECM with Mojotoro, recorded in 1991. At that time, José Maria Saluzzi was the group’s drummer. On Cité de la Musique and Responsorium – with Dino and, respectively, Marc Johnson and Palle Danielsson – José stepped forward as a guitarist with a sound of his own. With El Valle de la Infancia the Argentinean bandoneonist-composer-improviser Dino Saluzzi returns to his roots. Recorded in Buenos Aires, it’s the first of his discs to feature his “family band” since 2005’s Juan Condori. Here Dino is heard with his brother Felix on tenor sax and clarinet, his son José María on guitars and nephew Matías on basses. Friends joining the party are 7-string guitarist Nicolás “Colacho” Brizuela, known internationally for his long association with singer Mercedes Sosa, and drummer Quintino Cinalli, brought in by Dino to gently expand the sense of freedom that informs his music. “This work is alive with different genres”, writes Leopoldo Castilla in the liner notes. “From dances such as zamba to carnavalito to chacarera... The music captures the natural world of its origins: North Argentina, ablaze with mourning, despairing with joy.”