Astor 2020 - How it all started

We tango musicians don’t have much clarity when it comes to what to do with Piazzolla. You were always supposed to love him or hate him. I couldn’t hate him…like many of you, his was the first tango music I heard. So I chose to listen to him, try to understand him, embrace him, and try to make sense of how his bold, very personal brand fit in with the rest of tango.

Everything changed in April 2019.

I was on tour in Japan, and among the many interesting concert situations I experienced was this one: a guitar and violin recital in a Buddist temple. I’d never played in such a breathtaking space. In the repertoire that day was Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla. If you don’t know the piece, the idea is that Piazzolla tells history of tango in the 20th Century -or what he thought of it- in four movements for guitar and flute (often played on violin).

At that concert someone brought my attention to this fact: the movements are placed at exact 30-year intervals. Piazzolla was telling tango’s history in chapters, and, following that logic…the next chapter would happen in the year 2020. “That’s brilliant,” I said… “I’ll write a piece for guitar and flute and I’ll have a 5th movement in the history of tango.”

But when an idea is good, it can always be better – so I ended up embarking on a journey, inviting 10 other composers, today’s best, to write a piece for 2020, to offer their point of view of contemporary tango, and then have them record it.

So that’s how this incredible idea was born. You can help me make it see the light of day by supporting the Kickstarter campaign (ends December 4th). Every dollar counts!