Armando Cairo at the BIM-huis

Painter and jazz-saxophonist Armando Cairo has achieved astonishing results in a short period of time. His sextet is a solid group, that played only their own repertoire. Cairo composes and plays music like he paints. Conscientious, with respect for tradition, but certainly not without a kind of wildness in form and tone. Next week they will perform in the Amsterdam BIM-huis.

His musical education started with learning to play the guitar the classical way. “My parents discovered that I had a feeling for music, and my father made sure that I al least was taught the principles of music. He played guitar himself and although I had rather played the saxophone, it turned out in playing the guitar. Only after a long time, after I graduated from the Rietveld Academy, I picked up the saxophone again” Cairo tells us.

In the beginning the leader of a lot of the workshops I attended, Nedley Elstak, was an enormous stimulator. First of all because of his stage-experience, which he transferred to other with a lot of love. Furthermore, he taught me almost everything you could have found in textbooks, but always left room for one’s own deviations.
That is the way to get a solid education, but at the same time develop your won musical personality.

The next stepping-stone was the CREA big band, at that time directed by Frank Grasso. I played in his workshops a few times and when there was room, he invited me to join them.

Other reviews