“El Encuentro” follows bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi and cellist Anja Lechner to locations in Argentina, Germany, Armenia, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. “Your perception of music and your way of playing music change when you travel,” says Anja Lechner. The camera joins the journey and underlines the point, illuminating the processes of music making in very different contexts. They come from backgrounds that could hardly be more diverse – Saluzzi from South American tango and folk traditions and Lechner from the world of European classical music, but have worked closely together since the mid-1990s, beginning with the Kultrum (ECM 1251) alliance between Saluzzi and the Rosamunde Quartett. “El Encuentro” offers insights into the life of these travelling musicians seen here in concert, in rehearsal sessions, at recording studios, and in informal settings, variously joined by a cast that includes composer Tigran Mansurian, arranger Levon Eskenian, pianist George Gruntz, and Saluzzi’s brother, saxophonist/clarinetist Felix Saluzzi. The journey culminates in a concert of Saluzzi’s music with the Metropole Orchestra in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebow. A musician who has created a unique personal idiom, “I compose with hopes and memories”, says Dino Saluzzi, as he shapes a forward-looking personal idiom, coloured by remembrances of things past.