Abrazo Abierto by The London Tango Orchestra

The repertoire is based in Piazzolla, as he remains the main entry point into tango for many musicians worldwide, and this was the case for all the members of LTO, except for Guillermo. Part of the tango tradition is the constant search for innovation and renewing classic songs. Amongst some slightly adapted versions for orchestra, are new arrangements, especially commission for this project, by tango composers and musicians based in Paris. One of our goals as a group is to make connections between different tango musician circuits, and Paris has often been the site of renewal of tango during its long history. Piazzolla also spent several years living there and it was Nadia Boulanger (who he studied with there) who suggested he follow his tango roots rather than classical music - we will be forever grateful to her...

The musicians who wrote arrangements for us are:

Alfonso Pacin ​www.facebook.com/alfonso.pacin.7
A multi-instrumentalist (violin, guitar, voice, piano & bombo) who has been living and working in France from more than 30 years. He runs the folklore band La Tipica Folklorica
https://www.latipicafolklorica.com/

Laurent Gehant - a pianist and composer working in the contemporary music scene with Surnatural Orchestra and with his own tango bands Tangoleon and Serpientes.
https://tangoleonquartet.wixsite.com/tangoleon

Mathias Naon - a violinist and arranger working with Silbando Tango and teaching tango at Gennevilliers Conservatoire in Paris.
https://www.tarbesentango.fr/artistes/artiste/47

Piazzolla is the reason we play. The musicians in the orchestra began either as classical or jazz musicians and along our musical journeys we encountered Piazzolla - which for all of us was a very meaningful encounter. Caroline, who directs the group, fell in love with the violin playing of Fernando Suarez Paz on the album Tango Zero Hour and decided tango was to be her new path. Adios Nonino, which Piazzolla wrote after the death of his father, is very poignant for Caroline, because she started to learn the violin after her father died and she inherited his viola. So this album includes some of the Piazzolla pieces we love best, and which reflect different types of emotions - loss, nostalgia, tenderness... We also never want to forget the foundations of tango, always related to the dance, which is why we included an old classic, Gallo Ciego, in Pugliese's version. Pugliese was a strong influence on Piazzolla and we wanted to show this our inclusion of Negracha which has its rhythmic and musical approach echoed in Tanguedia by Piazzolla - this sense of obsession with a groove that you can't escape from, after all, obsession is an old tango theme....
Al Amigo Pablo Rago was written by the inspiring violinist Ramiro Gallo, who is an incredible arranger and composer as well as violinist. He has written the only book to exist so far on how to play tango violin.
Garua is a classic tango talking about rain and love (so appropriate for the UK!) and is played here as a parilla (improvisation) by Andrew and Guillermo, which is also part of a strong tradition in Argentina.
And finally the album finishes with an up-beat , recently written milonga by a great friend Nicolas Fontana, a bandoneonist and composer living in Buenos Aires. Even if tango is often full of dark energies and emotions, you can still dance the night away and lose yourself in the joyful expression of a happy milonga!

Guillermo had free reign to choose the songs he wanted and here he explains why:
I was born in Buenos Aires in 1970, and Astor Piazzolla’s music was part of the soundtrack of my life, specifically Balada para un loco in the Roberto Goyeneche version, which I think was recorded in 1969 and often played at home in our record player since I can remember…I also have a memory of watching Milva on black and white TV singing Oblivion in French – sadly it didn’t make it into this album … but I’m glad I had the chance to sing Balada, as I find it a joyful tour de force and a celebration of aliveness, individuality and the soul of Buenos Aires.
The other three Piazzolla songs that feature in the album, I enjoy singing them very much. I discovered them a lot later in my life. From Piazzolla’s collaboration with Borges’ majestic and evocative poetry of the porteño slums, I chose Jacinto Chiclana and El titere, which I heard first in recordings by two very diverse and amazing vocalists, Jairo and Edmundo Rivero.
...And from Piazzolla’s partnership with Horacio Ferrer (as well as Balada para un Loco) I particularly love La ultima grela, a melancholy and reflective epitaph for the working class women of the night, and a tribute to all women in tango.

The London Tango Orchestra is the largest professional tango group in the country, a real "orquesta tipica" uniting leading UK tango musicians with players from Argentina. The orchestra was founded in 2009 by Caroline Pearsall and is the first of its kind in the UK.
The orchestra performs music from the rich repertoire of tango, old and new, sharing its love of tango music.

thelondontangoorchestra.com