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Monsieur Periné
I don’t know when last I was so invigorated by a group of live musicians as I was by the Colombian band Monsieur Periné at the Highline Ballroom on Saturday night. Their sound is as fresh and varied as it gets, with a repertory that blends Latin and tropical, swing, New Orleans, gypsy, Parisian jazz,…
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Por amor al tango
A visit to Colombia to attend the Festival International de Tango de Medellín in June overlapped with a tour of the country by La Guardia Nueva, the guitar trio from Argentina that, earlier this year, won a first annual world competition for tango orchestras. They presented POR AMOR DEL TANGO, a CD featuring the singer…
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Festitango 2017
June 20-25 was my third time at the Festival International de Tango Medellín, a festival I like for its musical programming, its focus (in the city of Gardel’s death) on singers, and the window it opens on the city’s tango culture, which values professional distinction and amateur achievement in equal measure. There are competitions for…
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Ariel Ardit
Trim but stout looking, with a widow’s peak the curves of which seem to raise the eyebrows on his armadillo face, giving him a look not of surprise but of perpetual sympathy and amusement, the tango singer Ariel Ardit could be a clown or comedian were it not for his consummate posture and deportment, strong,…
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Malena Muyala
Malena Muyala is, at age 43, a distinctive tango vocalist who just might be generationally defining. She advances a view of time that has little, if anything, to do with nostalgia. This distinguishes her, by way of comparison, from two of the innovative female vocalists who came before her. Adriana Varela, two decades older, is…
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Adriana Varela
Last night, at Teatro Metropolitano in Medellín, Colombia, I heard Adriana Varela sing tango. This was no small matter. There are those who say she is the best living tango singer (among those still active), and although she recorded her first tangos in 1991, she carries the patina of an earlier era. She commands the…
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Danko
DANKO is the creation of Carlos Paredes, who, with his partner Diana Giraldo, in 2006 pulled off the first non-Argentine victory in the world championship for Stage Tango. It plays tonight at the Boulevard in Queens. I saw the show last Sunday at the Kimmel Center and was thoroughly entertained by Paredes’ charming company of…