Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Tango @ Jazz Standard 2/19/08

That was only my 2nd Tango show at the jazz clubs and it was awesome. They said there were doing different tunes the 2nd set, but I was too tired to stay. Del Curto said he didn’t intend it, but he ended up giving us a brief history of tango in the repertoire. It started with the orchestra for a couple of songs and then went to a quintet for a while, probably ½ hour. Then they brought Pablo Ziegler up and went to a trio then back to the orchestra for the remainder of the set.

Ziegler is one of the modern tango composers, and things became more modern after he took the stage. All of the songs were quite different. It was interesting there was no drums at all and yet it seemed to have such a percussive flair. I was also sitting near a friend of the band who plays the flute and got a verbal very brief history of tango. It started in Argentina as a musical fight. The men used it to show off their machismo. The first women who started dancing were prostitutes. Later, over about 40 years, some guy brought it to the rest of us. It sounds like when you delve in there’s a whole lot to the history. I may do that some day.

It was excellent from start to finish. I hope we get to see more in the jazz club setting. It sounds like there are a lot of venues for tango with dancing, but you really have to know what you are doing to dance it. Still, it might be fun to go to watch some time.

Hector Del Curto's “Eternal Tango Orchestra” plus special guest PABLO ZIEGLER
Hector Del Curto, David Hodges – bandoneons
Nick Danielson, Sami Merdinian, Sergio Reyes, Lucia Giraudo – violins
Katie Kresek – viola
Jisoo Ok – cello
Pedro Giraudo – bass
Gustavo Casenave – piano
Pablo Ziegler – piano

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Eternal Tango Orchestra is tentatively scheduled to play again at Dance Manhattan on April 11 and for sure at Dance Studio 101on April 25. Go to Chelsea Market on Fridays to see live tango music with Tito Castro.