Tango Siempre Quintet

Photos: Vincent Rowley

Tango Siempre are joined by guitarist Tom Ellis to perform the quintet music of Astor Piazzolla in its original instrumentation. Our repertoire includes the Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) and other classics together with early works and rarely performed gems.

The Tango Siempre Quintet launched at the WImbledon International Music Festival in 2021 and will be touring in 2022-23.

For enquiries see our contact page.

Why Quintet?

Astor Piazzolla toured with quintets for most of his career, from 1960 after he had returned from studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, up to the final quintet tour in 1989. Apart from the orchestral compositions, most of Piazzolla’s major works were conceived for this quintet format consisting of Violin, Bandoneon, Electric Guitar, Piano and Double Bass. The same format was used by the Quinteto Real of Horacio Salgan, Pedro Laurenz and Ubaldo de Lio, and was an answer to the economic problems of the larger tango orchestras after the economic crash in Aergentina in the mid 50s, as well as a natural evolution of tango’s instrumentation exploiting the potential of a new instrument, the electric guitar, to fill out the sound.

Our Approach

Tango Siempre have nearly twenty five years experience in interpreting and realising the music of Tango Argentino. In our performances of Astor Piazzolla’s quintet music we combine a detailed study of Piazzolla’s own recordings with our knowledge of the performance practises of Tango Argentino in order to uncover Piazzolla’s musical intentions, and his artistic vision, represented in these masterworks of twentieth century composition. And as always with Tango Siempre, we include contemporary pieces that continue the tradition of Piazzolla, and compositions of our own which reflect our interpretation of that tradition.

Repertoire

Piazzolla works