Salonline 2023-02-12 Quintango

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Sunday February 12, 2022
Emerson Avenue Salonlines Proudly Presents
a Live YouTube Broadcast

– A “hybrid” concert –

QuinTango

Freya Cheech & Joan Singer, violins
Susanna Mendlow, cello
Ali Cook, bass
Julie Huang Tucker, piano
Emmanuel Trifilio, bandoneon

How do we Keep the Music Playing?


PROGRAM

QuinTango is excited to share our new music and new dreams with the Emerson Avenue community. Here is an alphabetical list of old and new pieces on the menu for February 12. We will be editing this list up to the last minute to include our best and newest tangos. If your favorite is missing, contact Emerson – maybe we can add it!

Boca de Fresa – Emmanuel  Trifilio

Melancolico – Julian Plaza

El Fin – Emmanuel  Trifilio

Aspiration – Ali Cook

Kicho (last part) – Astor Piazzolla

El Repique – Roberto Firpo

Milk and Honey – Emmanuel  Trifilio

La Rayuela – Julio de Caro

Feriado – Emmanuel  Trifilio

Oblivion – Astor Piazzolla

Primavera Vez Emmanuel  Trifilio & Julie Huang Tucker

Glen Echo – Emmanuel  Trifilio

Dance Me to the End of Love – Leonard Cohen

Luna Roja – Emmanuel  Trifilio

La Cumparsita – Gerardo Rodriguez


Biography

Ali Cook, bass, has toured Russia with the National Symphony Orchestra as well as Germany, Turkey, Spain, and Austria with Christoph Eschenbach and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. She has performed with the Detroit and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, Washington National Opera, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, and the Salzburger Festspiele. She currently lives in Austin TX, where she combines a career as a singer/songwriter with her role as arranger/composer and performer for QuinTango.

Freya Creech, violin combines a busy and varied performance schedule as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborative artist in venues throughout the UK and Europe, including Royal Festival Hall (London), Festspielhaus (Salzburg) and Herculessaal (Munich). Since her move here from Germany in 2019, she has performed across North America.. Freya currently plays with the Grammy-nominated ‘True Concord Voices & Orchestra’, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Mount Vernon Virtuosi and has performed as first violinist of the Lazarus String Quartet and second violinist of the Rose Quartet. She has given numerous performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, Aldeburgh and Salzburg Kammermusik Festivals. Freya has produced two albums of little-known solo violin music, featuring music by Sonia Eckhardt-Gramatté and Virgil Thomson.

Susanna Mendlow, cello, plays a variety of musical styles including western classical, ethnic folk, tango, and pop and has toured throughout the US, Europe, Central Asia, and Mexico. In addition to her work with QuinTango, Susanna plays with Kassia Music and the world music duo DS al Cello. She holds degrees from Barnard College, Michigan State University, and SUNY Stony Brook. Dr. Mendlow teaches both privately and at the Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, MD.

Joan Singer, violin, has performed in concert in Europe, Central and South America,
Asia and throughout the United States. Joan combines a love of music with her Scotch-Irish story-telling talents, Quaker-based desire for global connections, and fondness for glitz. As QuinTango’s founder, she has made hundreds of friends and enriched thousands of lives.

Emmanuel Trifilio, bandoneon, is a Grammy-nominated composer whose Tango Suite for Bandoneon and Orchestra was premiered at the Endless Mountain Music Festival in New York in 2015. A native of Buenos Aires, Trifilio has appeared at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. He has performed in concert in Houston, Miami, Denver, San Francisco, and New York, as well as Cuba and Mexico. He currently resides in the USA.

Julie Huang Tucker piano, is an organist and keyboard artist who has appeared at the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, and National Cathedral with the National Symphony Orchestra, The Choral Arts Society of Washington, The Washington Chorus, Children’s Chorus of Washington, Washington Men’s Camerata, and Choralis. She is also an accompanist at the BelCanto Tuscany Opera Festival in Italy. Accolades include being a finalist in the Arthur Poister National Organ Competition, participant in the International Organ Festival in the Netherlands, and winner of the Oklahoma Troxel Competition. Her playing has been featured on American Public Media’s Pipedreamsradio program.

About QuinTango

Four-time WAMMIE award-winner QuinTango is the only tango music group to give a Command Performance at The White House and the only American tango group to give a Command Performance at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Buenos Aires. A finalist in the 2004 International Tango Competition, QuinTango has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN, and network television in the USA, Mexico and Costa Rica. In 2014 Washington D.C.’s GALA Hispanic Theater honored QuinTango with their Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service.

QuinTango has appeared as soloist with the Lancaster, Augusta, Charleston, Wichita, Ars Flores, Sonoma Philharmonic, Lancaster, and Fairfax Symphony Orchestras, and Orquesta de Sinaloa in Mexico. International tours include Italy, Uruguay and Argentina, France, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. Festival performances in the USA include eleven seasons at Piccolo Spoleto; Grand Teton Winter Music Festival, Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing, and the Mendocino Festival in California.

QuinTango’s work with public schools, community centers, libraries and ESL classes has led to memorable educational residencies in Appalachia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Indiana, Kansas, and North Carolina.

Listen to QuinTango on Pandora or Spotify or ask your smart speaker to play QuinTango. The group released their seventh album, OBSESIÓN, in June, available on the website.

QuinTango’s next international Fans & Friends tour is to Argentina/Uruguay November 10-21. We will be performing concerts, teaching you to tango, taking you to milongas and the World Heritage site of Colonia, Uruguay, for the Festival Internacional de Colonia. Our artists-as-diplomats tours put you on the bus with the band; you might even end up in our next video! It’s an adventure with a curated group of fun music-lovers. To join us, contact us at our web site, www.quintango.com or at 571-241-7683.

About Tango

The origins of Tango are a bit murky, but can be traced to the immigrant communities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. These polyglot neighborhoods along the Rio de la Plata were home to immigrant working-class Italians who loved opera, habanera-schooled Spaniards, milonga-dancing gauchos, African drummers and dancers, Jewish violinists from Poland and Russia, German accordion players, Hungarian lovers of gypsy music — dreamers and fighters all. Tango was their music, the sound-track of their daily dramas.

The respectable ladies and gentlemen of Buenos Aires were appalled at the abandon and sensuality of Tango; their adventurous offspring, however, were fascinated and made discreet visits to the low-income neighborhoods to listen to the music and learn the dance. One of these young men introduced Tango to the high society of Paris around 1911, spurring a passion for Tango and all things Latin. By 1913, Tango, with its air of forbidden seduction, was the toast of Paris.

Tango’s success in Paris was soon felt in Buenos Aires. The Parisian stamp of approval transformed the immigrant music of the ‘hood into an upper-class craze. Small improvisational music groups became well-rehearsed orchestras; band members donned white dinner jackets. Classically trained musicians moonlighted at tango cafes; poets abandoned traditional poetry to focus on tango lyrics. In a fit of patriotism, the government decreed that half of all radio programming be of Argentine origin. Tango orchestras raced to fill the vacuum in national programming, sending Tango over the airwaves throughout Argentina. Just as country music and jazz became the national sound of the United States via radio, Tango became Argentina’s national music thanks to these broadcasts.

The arrival of rock and roll ended Tango’s Golden Age. Like the big bands in this country, great tango orchestras fell on hard times as young people were swept away by Beatlemania. By the late 1950’s Tango was only for seniors. A few musicians continued to pour creative ideas into Tango – Julian Plaza, Mariano Mores, Horacio Salgán, Osvaldo Berlingieri, Eduardo Baffa – but the youth of Argentina wasn’t listening.

Two important artistic events in Paris launched Tango’s renaissance: the arrival of Astor Piazzolla and the debut of “Tango Argentina.” Astor Piazzolla was an Argentine tango musician who dreamed of becoming a classical composer. In 1953 he won a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. With her guidance, he created Nuevo Tango, a synthesis of classical techniques and tango passion that became popular with jazz and classical audiences. It wasn’t until the 1983 Parisian debut of the show “Tango Argentino,” however, that Tango achieved international stardom. Featuring musicians and dancers from Tango’s Golden Age, “Tango Argentino” electrified Paris and went on to tour the world, including two successful Broadway runs. Everywhere it played, audiences went mad for tango dance.

Now, as night falls in almost any city in the world, it is possible to find a milonga (a tango dance) and people from diverse cultures in close embrace, celebrating life three minutes at a time. Damascus, Tokyo, Istanbul, Dar as Salaam, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Tehran, Philadelphia, Montreal, Norfolk – wherever you travel next, google tango and check out the local tango scene. It’s a community that welcomes all who love the music and the dance.

Tango is dance, music, and poetry: the voice of Buenos Aires. In 2009 Tango was awarded World Cultural Heritage status, a stunning honor for the humble gift the poor immigrant neighborhoods along the Rio de la Plata gave to the world.

—notes by Joan Singer


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