Astor Piazzolla

Historical background

Born on 11 March 1921 in Mar del Plata, Astor Piazzolla moved to New York with his family in 1924, where he discovered the bandoneon in 1929 and, in 1932, wrote his first tango, "La catinga" (never released) - the same year he took a small part as a child actor in Carlos Gardel's film El día que me quieras. Back in Buenos Aires in 1938, he joined Aníbal Troilo's orchestra, formed the year before, as rank-and-file bandoneon, arranger and occasional stand-in pianist. He left Troilo in 1944 to lead the group backing singer Francisco Fiorentino, then launched his own orchestra in 1946, still within traditional conventions, before cutting a celebrated 78rpm disc in 1950-51 pairing "Triste" and "Chiqué".

On a Paris Conservatoire scholarship from 1954, he met composition teacher Nadia Boulanger the following year, who convinced him to build his art from tango and the bandoneon rather than away from them; he recorded sixteen pieces there with Martial Solal on piano. Back in Argentina he pursued two paths at once: a bandoneon-and-strings orchestra with a rule-breaking new repertoire ("Tango del ángel") featuring singer Jorge Sobral, and the Octeto Buenos Aires, which left only two LPs but which some consider the artistic peak of his career. After a rough patch in New York (1958) and his controversial jazz-tango experiment, he formed the Quinteto Nuevo Tango in 1960, which won over university audiences in particular, and wrote "Adiós Nonino" there on his father's death. He later collaborated with poet Horacio Ferrer ("Balada para un loco," 1969) and entered an Italian period ("Libertango," the "Suite troileana," written in 1975 after Troilo's death) before his own death on 4 July 1992.

Source: Julio Nudler, "Astor Piazzolla," Todotango.com, https://www.todotango.com/creadores/biografia/44/Astor-Piazzolla/.