Raúl Garello  - Arlequín Porteño Bandoneon player, band leader and composer (b. 1936) His most important and fruitful career move was to join the Aníbal Troilo Orchestra as the bandoneon player, where he developed his distinctive music style and personality. He started arranging works for orchestra in 1966 (Agustín Bardi's La guiñada for the Baffa-Berlingieri Orchestra; Juan Carlos Cobián's Los mareados for Pichuco's orquesta). He was the arranger and bandoneón player in Pichuco’s famed tango orchestra until Pichuco died in 1975.   Since 1980, he has been the co-leader and co-founder of the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires, a notable responsibility he shares with Maestro Carlos García. On July 9, 1990, he achieved a lifelong goal:  He conducted the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires at the beautiful Colon Theater in Buenos Aires.  He reached another pinnacle of success in 1988, when he appeared in the movie, Tango for Two, directed by Hector Olivera.  Garello’s style of tango uniquely matches the contemporary mood of Buenos Aires with an intimately personal sound, harmonic richness, and an all encompassing aesthetic beauty.       Jose Bragato - Graciela y Buenos Aires   Bragato was born in Udine, Italy, on October 12, 1915, into a family of woodworkers and musicians. Music was the hobby of all his brothers, encouraged by their father, Don Enrico Bragato, a flutist. At one time or another, all the brothers were soloists at the renowned Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (Bruno, flutist, José, cellist, and Enrique Bragato, bassoon player).  But only one devoted himself to composing music -- José.   Upon arriving in Argentina in 1928, the Bragato’s settled in the Saavedra neighborhood of Buenos Aires.  There, José resumed his piano studies, but in 1930 severe storms and floods left his family temporarily homeless. Jose’s piano was lost. After this tragedy, the German violoncellist, Peltz, as a gift, gave Bragato his first cello and free lessons. From then on, Bragato dedicated himself to not only classical music, but also to popular music, discovering, reviving and publishing Argentine and Paraguayan folk music.  He helped make widely popular the guarania, a folkloric style of Paraguayan music created by Jose Asuncion Flores in 1925.  The guarania, perhaps the most important musical phenomena of Paraguay, is characterized by slow rhythms and melodic melancholy songs.   In 1946, Bragato won an award which allowed him to solo with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, thereby leading to a new position as the substitute cello soloist of the Orquesta Estable of the Colon Theatre in Buenos Aires.  His career as a soloist became busy, as he performed with the Buenos Aires Quartet, the Pessina Quartet, and many other respected chamber quartets in Argentina.  During all these years as a soloist, he never stopped composing music. In addition, he continued his love of the tango, joining some of Argentina’s most outstanding tango orchestras, such as that of Francini Pontiers, Anibal Troilo, and Stampone, the latter two with whom he recorded.      In 1954, Bragato took part in Astor Piazzolla's "heroic feat" to assemble the Octeto Buenos Aires. From that moment on, he was a fervent admirer and close friend of Piazzolla, finally joining his Sextango in 1989, upon the urgings of Piazzolla himself.  He also co-founded the Channel 13 Orchestra and joined Leo Lipesker’s First Tango Chamber Quartet (Primer Cuarteto de Cámara del Tango), among other tango groups.   From 1976 to 1982, due to his tough defense of human rights under the Argentine military dictatorship, he went into exile in Brazil, where he became a soloist in the Porto Alegre orchestra. It was here where he also started a music archive. Later he joined the chamber ensemble of the Universidad de Natal (Brazil), where he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree (Doctor Honoris Causa).  Over the past 14 years, he has been in charge of the Argentine Music Archive, SADAIC, and continues to be active in university music programs and in orchestral performances throughout the world.  He is recognized as bringing the music of Argentine composers to many different countries, providing free music scores to many non-profit artistic and educational institutions.   At 80 years old, Bragato performed a cello solo at Radio Music Hall in New York City with an ensemble that accompanied the famous tango ballet dancer, Julio Bocca.  At 81, he played in the Orquesta de Tango de Juan de Dios Filiberto, a tango orchestra conducted by his friend, Maestro Osvaldo Piro.   Bragato can be credited for the inclusion of the cello into the typical tango orchestra, which earlier only included the violin as the leading voice.  He encouraged Argentine composers to write tangos that featured the cello, and not just the bandoneón or the violin.  His Graciela y Buenos Aires has become such a mainstay of symphonic tango repertoire and in Germany, and other European countries, his works are widely published and performed.                                                      Astor Piazzolla  (1921-1992) - Estaciones porteñas   "Piazzolla took tango out of cheap places, where it was just entertainment, just popular tunes in a coffee shop.  His music is of a higher quality. I don't reject the roots of tango.  There were many wonderful tangos written before Piazzolla, but he works with more sophisticated material; the emotion in his music is more profound."                                         ----Latvian violinist, Guidon Kremer   Piazzolla was instrumental in the renaissance of the tango after World War II.  Born in 1921 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, he moved to New York’s lower East Side at a young age.  Oddly, it was in New York, where he lived from age three to fifteen that he developed nostalgia for a country he scarcely remembered.  He taught himself to play the bandoneon and was swept up in the newest craze in America: the tango of Argentina. At the age of 13, he was invited to tour Latin America by tango superstar Carlos Gardel. Piazzolla never made the tour, in the course of which Gardel died in a plane crash.  But he was soon back in Argentina, playing in the band of Anibal Troilo (who, when he died, left Piazzolla his bandoneon).  While in Argentina, Piazzolla studied composition with Alberto Ginastera. In 1946, he formed his own orchestra, but after only four years, he decided to concentrate on classical music, composing for chamber ensembles and symphonic groups.  In 1954, he went to Paris on a scholarship from the French government and studied under Nadia Boulanger, mentor of Aaron Copland and Philip Glass.  She recognized Piazzolla’s talent and led him back to the tango. He returned to New York, but stayed only two years before finding himself again in Buenos Aires.  There he put together his famed “Quinteto” – bandoneon, violin, piano, guitar, and double bass.  The Quintet traveled all over the world, bringing the influence of jazz and contemporary “classical” music to the traditional tango.  As Piazzolla himself said, “It may not be tango, but it mirrors the spirit of our city and of today’s porteño”. Resolved to update the tango, Piazzolla succeeded in shocking tango traditionalists by infusing his tangos with the harmonic language he had learned in Paris, -- Bartok, Schoenberg, and Messiaen--, with the rhythms influenced by Stravinsky and by jazz, in addition to melodic innovations that many saw as severing tango from its roots.  An Argentine pianist tells a story that best illustrates the depth of passion Piazzolla’s “new tango” aroused.  “My father was a bandoneon tuner.  One night Piazzolla’s orchestra came on the radio.  There were a bunch of musicians at my father’s shop at the time.  All of a sudden there was silence.  This was unlike anything we’d heard before.  The minute it was over, an argument erupted. While that was going on, the phone rang and my father answered.  He listened--barely saying a word, then hung up and said, “So-and-so (a famous tango band leader at that time) is going to the radio station to wait for Piazzolla so he can beat him up!” Piazzolla himself proudly told how he was threatened with a gun during a radio interview.      Arturo Marquez  - Danzón Nº 5 Born in 1950, Marquez is the foremost Mexican composer of his generation.   His works show richness, variety and an impeccable craftsmanship.  He has created his own musical language, as a result of his own music background: piano, violin, trombone, music bands, jazz, rock, and music studies with some of Mexico’s leading composers, such as Gutierrez Heras, Quintanar, Ibarra, Enriquez.  He did post-graduate studies in music in France and the United States, where he worked on electronic music techniques with Morton Subotnick.  Marquez has been praised for his deep knowledge of Mexican traditional music, which he has successfully employed in his own music without falling victim to the “folksy” stereotypical idioms.  He is an accomplished arranger and orchestrator.  Marquez has said of Danzon No. 2 that he wrote it while traveling to Malinalco with the painter Andres Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martinez. Both of his travelling companions were experts in social dances and both loved the danzon, which they indulged in dance halls in the port city of Veracruz and the popular Salon Colonia in Mexico City.   From sharing these dance experiences of his two friends, Marquez learned the rhythms, the forms, and the melodic twists of the dance.  He also listened to old recordings of the legendary Acerina and his Danzonera.  In his own words, Marquez explains the significance of this beautifully, melodic work:   “I discovered that the apparent lightness of the danzon hides a music full of sensuality and rigor, music that our old folks live with, nostalgia and joy, a world that we can still grasp in the dance music of Veracruz and the dance halls of Mexico City.  Danzon No. 2 is a tribute to this world that nurtured it.  It tries to get as close as possible to the dance, to the nostalgic melodies, its monotonous rhythms, and although it desecrates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic vocabulary, it is a personal way of expressing my admiration and feelings towards real popular music”             .