Argentine nuevo tango

Astor Piazzolla was a misfit in the tango community. He ate, slept, and breathed tango, but he wasn’t satisfied. After years and years of pushing the tango envelope, writing music and playing bandoneon (that square squeezebox often confused for accordion), he was criticized by more traditional tangueros in the scene. His music was put down. Too abstract, too hard for dancers.

The incredibly gifted Astor won a scholarship to study music with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He felt destined to write only “serious,” classical music. But he couldn’t hide his tango self for long, and he played one of his tangos for Boulanger. Her response: “Astor, your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla is here, never leave it behind.”

From then on, Piazzolla knew his identity was in a new kind of tango: written for the concert hall, with a complexity borrowed from jazz and on a grand, orchestral scale.

Bandoneonist Julien Labro is keeping the nuevo tango dream alive with his arrangement of Piazzolla’s Las Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires).

He and classical guitarist Jason Vieaux perform the piece with the New West Symphony, along with Canvas, a World Premiere double concerto by Labro.

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