Raúl Garello – Arlequin Porteño Bandoneon player, band leader and composer (b. 1936). Raúl Garello was born in the city of Chacabuco, in the province of Buenos Aires. He became one of the most important “post-Piazzolla” contemporary tango composers and performers. When he moved to Buenos Aires, he joined the Radio Belgrano tango orchestra where he met Leopoldo Federico, whom he later replaced in Roberto Firpo’s quartet. He accompanied many well- known singers of his time, such as Alberto Moran (he eventually became the band leader for Moran’s tango musicians), and he also played alongside bandoneón players, such as Alfredo de Franco and Osvaldo Piro. His most important and fruitful career move was to join the Aníbal Troilo Orchestra, where he developed his distinctive music style and personality. He started arranging works for orchestra in 1966 (Agustín Bardi's La guiñada for the Baffa- Berlingieri Orchestra; Juan Carlos Cobián's Los mareados for Pichuco's orquesta). He was the arranger and bandoneón player in Pichuco’s famed tango orchestra until Pichuco died in 1975. Since 1980, he has been the co-leader and co-founder of the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires, a notable responsibility he shares with Maestro Carlos García. On July 9, 1990, he achieved a lifelong goal: He conducted the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires at the beautiful Colon Theater in Buenos Aires. He reached another pinnacle of success in 1988, when he appeared in the movie, Tango for Two, directed by Hector Olivera. Che, Buenos Aires, one of Garello’s tango that uniquely matches the contemporary mood of Buenos Aires with an intimately personal sound, harmonic richness, and an all encompassing aesthetic beauty. Che Buenos Aires was premiered by the Anibal Toilo Orchestra in 1969

Arlequin Porteño, (Harlequin from Buenos Aires) is a symphonic fantasy written for violin and orchestra in three movements: Pantomima Tema de Arlequin and Adioses. The harlequin is personified by the violin, and paints it as a mischievous figure strolling the streets of Buenos Aires The first movement in tempo di tango is called Pantomima, the orchestra presents the themes that later is developed by the violin. The second movement – Tema del Arlequin - starts with a violin cadenza like a recitative and evolves into an Argentine waltz. Adioses (Good byes), the last movement, also in tempo di tango blabla returns to the first theme Arlequin Porteño was written in 2002

Emilio Kauderer – El desquite Kauderer was born in . He studied composition with Jacobo Ficher and conducting with Jaques Bodmer. He performed as a classical pianist and then engaged in rigorous composition and conducting training at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory on a full merit scholarship. Upon his return to Argentina his chamber compositions were performed by the Camerata Bariloche. Emilio's Wind Quintet "Danzón" won the Yamaha-Promusica Award in 1987. He began work in the Cinema of Argentina in 1980, composing for the film La Discoteca del amor, which was directed by . He received a fellowship to The Sundance Institute’s Composer’s Lab and was honored by having been selected as the composer of the music for New York’s Jewish Heritage Museum main exhibit piece. His musical, "Paquito's Christmas," was performed at the Washington Opera and the Pasadena Civic Center in , and featured Plácido Domingo’s grandson, Dominic. Emilio composed the music for the Oscar winning film, “” (Best Foreign Film 2010) in collaboration with composer . The score won the Clarin Award for Best Soundtrack 2009 (Argentina), Premio Sur for Best Soundtrack 2009 (Argentina), Condor de Plata Award 2010 for Best Soundtrack(Argentina), Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano Award 2009 for Best Soundtrack, and was nominated for best soundtrack at the Goya Awards 2010 (Spain). Kauderer's symphonic work has been performed by the National Symphonic Orchestras in Argentina and Honduras, the La Porte Symphony Orchestra and the Pan American Symphony Orchestra in Washington. El desquite (The Revenge) Tango meets Hollywood, a couple of years ago I asked Emilio to write a tango in the idiom that he uses for his film music and this is the outcome

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)

"Piazzolla took tango out of cheap places, where it was just entertainment, just popular tunes in a coffee shop. His music is of a higher quality. I don't reject the roots of tango. There were many wonderful tangos written before Piazzolla, but he works with more sophisticated material; the emotion in his music is more profound." ----Latvian violinist, Guidon Kremer

Piazzolla was instrumental in the renaissance of the tango after World War II. Born in 1921 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, he moved to New York’s lower East Side at a young age. Oddly, it was in New York, where he lived from age three to fifteen that he developed nostalgia for a country he scarcely remembered. He taught himself to play the bandoneon and was swept up in the newest craze in America: the tango of Argentina. At the age of 13, he was invited to tour Latin America by tango superstar Carlos Gardel. Piazzolla never made the tour, in the course of which Gardel died in a plane crash. But he was soon back in Argentina, playing in the band of Anibal Troilo (who, when he died, left Piazzolla his bandoneon). While in Argentina, Piazzolla studied composition with Alberto Ginastera. In 1946, he formed his own orchestra, but after only four years, he decided to concentrate on classical music, composing for chamber ensembles and symphonic groups. In 1954, he went to Paris on a scholarship from the French government and studied under Nadia Boulanger, mentor of Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. She recognized Piazzolla’s talent and led him back to the tango. He returned to New York, but stayed only two years before finding himself again in Buenos Aires. There he put together his famed “Quinteto” – bandoneon, violin, piano, guitar, and double bass. The Quintet traveled all over the world, bringing the influence of jazz and contemporary “classical” music to the traditional tango. As Piazzolla himself said, “It may not be tango, but it mirrors the spirit of our city and of today’s porteño”. Resolved to update the tango, Piazzolla succeeded in shocking tango traditionalists by infusing his tangos with the harmonic language he had learned in Paris, -- Bartok, Schoenberg, and Messiaen--, with the rhythms influenced by Stravinsky and by jazz, in addition to melodic innovations that many saw as severing tango from its roots. An Argentine pianist tells a story that best illustrates the depth of passion Piazzolla’s “new tango” aroused. “My father was a bandoneon tuner. One night Piazzolla’s orchestra came on the radio. There were a bunch of musicians at my father’s shop at the time. All of a sudden there was silence. This was unlike anything we’d heard before. The minute it was over, an argument erupted. While that was going on, the phone rang and my father answered. He listened-- barely saying a word, then hung up and said, “So-and-so (a famous tango band leader at that time) is going to the radio station to wait for Piazzolla so he can beat him up!”

Sequencia del angel, Many of Piazzolla’s works were either conceived as suites or were collected into suites after the fact, and this Sequencia is one of the later. The pieces were composed between 1957 to 1965 Historically, the “milonga” is a syncopated, duple meter, possibly African contributor to the evolution of the tango. “La muerte del angel,” a four-voice fugue, was originally conceived as music for a play of the same name by the Argentine playwright Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz.

Escualo (Shark), composed in 1979 for the famous tango violinist Fernando Suarez Paz, refers to shark-fishing, Piazzolla’s favorite pastime while vacationing in Punta del Este, Uruguay. This work is one of the most rhythmically challenging among Piazzolla’s compositions, and is famously known as the most difficult to perform on the violin

S.V.P. (S’il Vous Plait) was one of the first tangos composed by Astor Piazzolla, while he studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. While not yet “tango nuevo”, its charm and melancholic mood seduce the listener with bittersweet tenderness

Michelangelo ’70, which references the name of a Buenos Aires cafe where the composer’s quintet performed in the 70s, is an intriguing piece that is centered on a repeated three-note theme, composed as a sort of musical exercise.

José Bragato, Graciela y Buenos Aires Bragato was born in Udine, Italy, on October 12, 1915, into a family of woodworkers and musicians. Music was the hobby of all his brothers, encouraged by their father, Don Enrico Bragato, a flutist. At one time or another, all the brothers were soloists at the renowned Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (Bruno, flutist, José, cellist, and Enrique Bragato, bassoon player). But only one devoted himself to composing music -- José. Upon arriving in Argentina in 1928, the Bragato’s settled in the Saavedra neighborhood of Buenos Aires. There, José resumed his piano studies, but in 1930 severe storms and floods left his family temporarily homeless. Jose’s piano was lost. After this tragedy, the German violoncellist, Peltz, as a gift, gave Bragato his first cello and free lessons. From then on, Bragato dedicated himself to not only classical music, but also to popular music, discovering, reviving and publishing Argentine and Paraguayan folk music. He helped make widely popular the guarania, a folkloric style of Paraguayan music created by Jose Asuncion Flores in 1925. The guarania, perhaps the most important musical phenomena of Paraguay, is characterized by slow rhythms and melodic melancholy songs. In 1954, Bragato took part in Astor Piazzolla's "heroic feat" to assemble the Octeto Buenos Aires. From that moment on, he was a fervent admirer and close friend of Piazzolla, finally joining his Sextango in 1989, upon the urgings of Piazzolla himself. He also co-founded the Channel 13 Orchestra and joined Leo Lipesker’s First Tango Chamber Quartet , among other tango groups. From 1976 to 1982, due to his tough defense of human rights under the Argentine military dictatorship, he went into exile in Brazil, where he became a soloist in the Porto Alegre orchestra. Later he joined the chamber ensemble of the Universidad de Natal (Brazil), where he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree. Over the past 14 years, he has been in charge of the Argentine Music Archive, SADAIC, and continues to be active in university music programs and in orchestral performances throughout the world. He is recognized as bringing the music of Argentine composers to many different countries, providing free music scores to many non-profit artistic and educational institutions. At 80 years old, Bragato performed a cello solo at Radio Music Hall in with an ensemble that accompanied the famous tango ballet dancer, Julio Boca. At 81, he played in the Orquesta de Tango de Juan de Dios Filiberto, a tango orchestra conducted by his friend, Maestro Osvaldo Piro. Graciela y Buenos Aires is a tango for cello and string orchestra has become the mainstay of the symphonic repertoire, the composer wrote it as a birthday present for the daughter of a friend.