Orquesta Típica Imperial

Historical background

Formed in July 1999, the Orquesta Típica Imperial was one of the founding ensembles of the La Máquina Tanguera cultural movement, the collective of young musicians that Sofía Cecconi sees taking shape in the late 1990s and whose peak she places during the Argentine crisis. It joined the Academia Nacional del Tango's Cuadro Joven as early as 2000, played the Buenos Aires Tango Festival in 2001 and 2002, the Viva el Tango festival in Montevideo for a tribute to Osvaldo Pugliese, and the Café Tortoni. Between March and April 2003 it toured Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg, in concert halls as in milongas.

The orchestra takes up the golden-age line-up - three bandoneons, three violins, cello, double bass and piano - and sets itself the principle of commitment to a purely tanguero sound. It plays its own arrangements of traditional tangos alongside its own compositions, in instrumental and sung versions; its music bears the influence of Pugliese, whose accentuation remains its most salient rhythmic trait, and its instrumental work conveys the force and temper of rioplatense feeling. The first line-up numbered nine musicians, among them bandoneonist Matilde Vitullo, who would later take over its direction. A first record, La Máquina Tanguera, appeared in late 2003, a second, Ruidos molestos, in July 2005. In August 2006 the orchestra featured as protagonist in Germán Kral's film El último aplauso, recording its soundtrack.

Source: "Orquesta Típica Imperial," crónica no. 488, Todotango.com, https://www.todotango.com/historias/cronica/488/Orquesta-Tipica-Imperial/ ; Sofía Cecconi, "La crisis de 2001 y el tango juvenil," Estudios Sociológicos vol. XXXV, no. 103, 2017, https://www.redalyc.org/journal/598/59849770006/html/ ; the orchestra's official biography as reproduced by Ruben Berdichesky, TangoRBerdi, 19 May 2008, https://musicarberdi.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/orquesta-tipica-imperial-ruidos-molestos-2005/ (accessed 31 July 2026).