Tangos... & Something More

How to revivify tango? It's been a pressing question ever since Astor Piazzolla's death in 1992. Grupo Encuentros, established by Argentinian musicologist Alicia Terzian in 1979 ‘to promote the new music of Latin American and Argentinian composers’ (a blurb smacking of a Tory Brexitopath talking about ‘the continent’) has evolved into one of the more interesting responses. Terzian comes to the standards of Lucio Demare, Mariano Mores, the underrated Aquiles Roggero, Juan Carlos Cobián and Piazzolla himself from an experimental, classical background. On Tangos… she conducts a septet of excellent musicians, including Daniel Binelli, one of the finest working bandoneón players, and Marta Blanco, a gifted mezzo soprano.

Shaking up both old tango canción numbers as well as concert pieces, this formidable team give us arrangements that are deconstructions as well as developments, commentaries on, and reworkings of familiar melodies and time-honoured tropes. A range of moods is explored, with the accent on chiaroscuro; the playoff between nostalgia for the past and the timeless sway of the dance beat on the one hand, and the layering of dark histories, changing roles, collapsing hegemonies on the other. The music breaks down on occasion. Eerie flutes and crashing piano disturb the harmonies. Scatting shatters the flow. This is tango for now and for mañana. Reborn? Not fully, but like Frankenstein's creation, this zombie tango is questioning and questing.