Astor Piazzolla revolutionized the traditional tango with the help of his knowledge of jazz and classical music, which he had studied with the legenary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She encouraged him . The result was his nuevo tango.
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Astor Piazzolla was a composer and bandoneón player who revolutionized tango music. In 1924 Piazzolla’s family moved from Buenos Aires to New York City – Astor was only three years old. They stayed there, with a brief interlude, until 1936. He listened to Cab Calloway in Harlem. Later, again in Buenos Aires, he played traditional tango on his bandoneón in Aníbal Troilo’s orchestra. In 1940 he composed a piece for Arthur Rubinstein who was in Buenos Aires on a tour. Rubinstein recognized Piazzolla’s talent and told him to take lessons in composing with Alberto Ginastera – and that is what he did. With Ginastera he listened a lot to Bartók and Stravinsky. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilo – the tango scene considered this to be ingratitude and treason – but the 25-year old went his own way and created his own group.
In September 1954 he and his wife arrived in Paris. Until February 14, 1955 he studied classical music with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, back then at the Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau. She was not happy with his classical music compositions, which lacked personality. After he had revealed that he played the bandoneon and after he had played her his tango composition Triunfal, she recognized that this was where his talent lay and encouraged him to use traditional music as an inspiration for contemporary compositions. That’s what he did in Paris, notably with the legendary Lalo Schifrin and, in other sessions, with the jazz musician Martial Solal on piano, recording fourteen titles, including Sens Unique, Picasso and Marron y Azul.
He introduced counterpoints, fugues and new harmonies into tango music. But it took Astor Piazzolla up to the 1980s to become recognized in his homeland of Argentina. I had the chance to see him towards the end of his life in a memorable concert at Geneva’s Victoria Hall. Unfortunately, he suffered a brain haemorrhage in Paris Geneva’s Victoria Hall on November 5, 1989. Subsequently, in Paris on August 4, 1990 he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in Buenos Aires on July 4, 1992 without regaining consciousness.
La Camorra (to go directly to the Amazon page you have to accept cookies: Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; Amazon.de) is an album recorded in 1988 in New York City – by the way, a camorra is a quarrel. Soledad is a harmonious, tonal ballad. La Camorra I is more like a traditional tango. La Fugata is some sort of chamber music. Sur: Los Suenõs and Sur: Regreso Al Amor are emotional, passionate compositions.
The CD Tango: Zero Hour (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de) is more radical. It is an album which challenges traditional listening habits. This is no dancing music like traditional tango, no easy listening music, but as Piazzolla put it himself: This is “… the greatest record I’ve made in my entire life. We gave our souls to [it]. This is the record I can give to my grandchildren an say, ‘This is what we did with our lives’.” La Hora Zero was recorded in New York City in 1986 with Piazzolla’s famous New Tango Quintet. Tango: Zero Hour is still avant-garde, as its title says, a reinvention of a music as if it had not existed before.
The cover of the Astor Piazzolla album Tango: Zero Hour. Audio CD available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
The cover of Astor Piazzolla’s album La Camorra – The Solitude of Passionate Provocation. Audio CD vailable at Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; Amazon.de.
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This is a short biography with two short album reviews from our archives, first published on April 1, 2000. Added (with a few new details) to our newly designed pages on July 15, 2023 at 16:44 Madeira time.
