Nuevo Tango Concert with Daniel Binelli

Nuevo Tango Concert with Daniel Binelli, Pablo Cohen, Steven Mauk, and Nicholas Walker
Ford Hall
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
8:15 p.m.
FREE: Seating on a first-come, first-served basis

Bandoneón player extraordinaire, composer, and tango legend Daniel Binelli headlines this special concert that winds through the sonic camouflages and counterpoints of Latin American music. Binelli will play in quartet with Ithaca College School of Music faculty members Pablo Cohen (classical guitar), Steven Mauk (saxophone), and Nicholas Walker (double bass).

Tango is closely identified with an instrument never found in classical chamber music ensembles or orchestras: the bandoneón. A button squeezebox instrument developed in Germany and constructed of wood, metal, leather, and mother of pearl, the bandoneón is a formidably difficult instrument to play. Its sonorities define tango.

Daniel Binelli is one of the world’s greatest virtuosos of the bandoneón. He has played bandoneón with major orchestras in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. With over 50 CDs, countless compositions, and many film scores, Binelli is also widely acclaimed as the foremost exponent and torchbearer of the music of tango legend Astor Piazzolla, who forged the nuevo tango style.

A seminal figure of Argentine tango in the 1950s, Piazzolla moved tango beyond danceable music into avant-garde explorations within rigorous classical structure. Piazzolla’s music brought 20th-century dissonances to the traditional harmonic spectrum of tango. Driving rhythms, memorable melodies, and the crossover among the tango traditions, classical techniques, and jazz improvisation distinguish his nuevo tango.

Tango conjures counterpoint in many forms: sexuality, syncopation, South America, seduction, sad longing, subconscious desires. Yet in Argentina, tango is considered the second national anthem, expressing collective national consciousness, social and political displacements, melancholy, and loss.

Tango emerged in the late 19th-century among immigrants in Buenos Aires working-class neighborhoods, brothels, and gangster gatherings. Throughout the 20th century, the middle and upper classes—as well as the Catholic Church—attempted to restrict tango, associating it with violence, the underclass, and political destabilization. Identified with the proletariat and creolized culture, tango was often banned both in Argentina and Europe. The guerra sucia (dirty war) was a state sponsored war on citizens in response to strikes and dissident activities from 1976 to 1983 where the desaparecidos—the disappeared—are estimated between 6,000 and 30,000 people. After the end of the Argentine military dictatorship, tango exploded as a radical expression of Argentina’s culture. A melancholic, violent, erotic, highly intricate dance form unique to Argentina, tango is also characterized by assertive rhythm, passionate flourishes, elaborate textures, and dramatic changes.

This concert is a rare opportunity to hear tango in all its virtuosity, complexity, counterpoints and camouflages, and collaborations. Clear your calendar—this concert is not to be missed!