Máximo Diego Pujol was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1957 and graduated from the Juan José Castro Provincial Conservatory. His instrumental studies were with Alfredo Vicente Gascón, Horacio Ceballos, Liliana Ardissone and Miguel Angel Girollet. He also studied harmony and composition under the guidance of Leónidas Arnedo.
As a performer he has appeared throughout Argentina and at guitar festivals in Europe and Australia. His guitar compositions have won awards at competitions in Colombia, France and the World Festival in Martinique and in 1989 he was awarded the Argentine Composers’ Union prize as Best Composer of Classical Music.
His work is strongly influenced by the great Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla. Like Piazzolla, Máximo Pujol uses the tango as a basic style in wonderfully colourful, melodically rich works that make full use of the expressive powers of the guitar. His Tres Piezas Rioplatenses (Three Pieces from the River Plate Region) attempt to summarize, as an integral work, the three great musical genres that emerge from the River Plate Basin: the tango, the milonga and the candombe. Written in the style of a little suite, the three pieces are linked to each other through a common melodic element. Usually there is no differentiation between the genres and the term “tango” is used for all forms of musical expression from the River Plate Basin.
The tango, however, properly so called, is clearly urban and moderate in tempo; the milonga, of rural origin, is noted for its contemplative and somewhat melancholy character, and the candombe, stemming from Africa, for its rhythmic richness, and above all for the abundant syncopations, ostinatos and displaced accents.