Argentine tango
New York, New York
Photo: Federico Rodriguez Caldentey
With impeccable musicianship, a sophisticated stage presence, and a repertoire that moves seamlessly from the genre’s roots in the traditional orquesta típica to the jazz-inflected tango nuevo, New York’s celebrated Pedro Giraudo Tango Ensemble exemplifies the emotional vitality of the elegant, subtle, and intensely passionate Argentine music and dance called tango.
A leader in the resurgent international tango scene, bassist, composer, and bandleader Pedro Giraudo grew up in a musical family in Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest city. His father was the conductor for the Córdoba Symphony Orchestra, and Pedro began piano and later violin lessons as a very young child. A teenage rebellion led him to rock music, playing electric bass. The 1980s and early ’90s were a relatively fallow period for tango in the popular consciousness of Argentina, which was just emerging from years of political turmoil and dictatorship, so it wasn’t until Giraudo arrived in New York in 1996 to study jazz at the university level that he truly fell in love with the acoustic bass and with tango, the signature music of his homeland.
During the late 1800s, Argentina’s capital port city of Buenos Aires was a multicultural mix of Europeans, criollos, Africans, and Indigenous peoples. As is often the case, it was in the city’s bars and brothels where the musical traditions of these diverse groups first began to mingle. One of the exciting hybrid forms that emerged from these cultural encounters was tango. First embraced by the working classes, it was only after a tango craze swept Europe in the beginning of the 20th century that interest in this provocative dance broadened in its native land. Tango eventually became a national symbol of Argentina during the Golden Age of the 1920s.
While in college, Pedro Giraudo rediscovered the work of Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), the legendary Argentine tanguero. While Piazzolla had moved from tango through jazz to create the tango nuevo style, for Giraudo his training in jazz was a launching point into tango, which he describes as “a place that I feel very much at home, where I can be true to myself.” Giraudo built a reputation and fame playing with tango greats like Pablo Ziegler, Piazzolla’s star pianist, on stages around the world. A Latin Grammy-winning instrumentalist and composer for his 2018 album Vigor Tanguero, as well as for his work on Ruben Blades's 2014 Tangos, Giraudo has just released his latest album, Impulso Tanguero.
Pedro Giraudo formed his first tango orchestra at the behest of Lincoln Center, for their 2015 Midsummer Night Swing; among his other projects is this quartet of longtime bandmates who form the core of his ensembles: Rodolfo Zanetti on bandoneón (an instrument in the concertina family), Nick Danielson on violin, and Ahmed Alom on piano. Joining them on stage are dancers Mariana Parma and Leonardo Sardella, whose graceful and electric moves embody the conversation between these four virtuoso musicians, inviting audiences to experience the lush musicality and emotional intensity of Argentine tango.