BWW Reviews: HOMAGE TO ANIBAL TROILO Inspires at Symphony Space

After one hundred years, Anibal Troilo is remembered ever so fondly as the late Argentinean master musician. He lived from 1914-1975, though his music continues to enlighten as delicately and pointedly as the sound of a trilling bandoneón. In his honor, over thirty performing artists have gathered to ask audiences in New York a question, deceptive in its simplicity, though incredibly sophisticated: "Shall We Tango?"

Tango has everything in one bountifully syncretic artistic and cultural genre, displaying a matchless diversity within its particular world. Everything can be heard from its seasoned masters and emerging performers alike, from the precise colorings of call-and-response true to the most technically impressive of world music as from India, to the wildly reflective improvisational solos of jazz or Middle Eastern music, the sonorous melodies and harmonies known to classical traditions, and even integrating creativity soundscapes as far afield from musical categorization as in experimental noise.

Around the corner from the characterful Upper West Side stone-laden treasure, Pomander Walk, at the cusp of Harlem on Broadway, Symphony Stage opened their doors to a crowd-pleasing treasure, Quinteto Tango, a five-piece ensemble hailing from Colombia. Presenting eight variations on the theme of tango for their New York debut, Quinteto Tango, led by bandoneónist Giovanni Parra, delighted with an immense bravura, receiving well-deserved standing ovations aplenty. For Quinteto Tango, exhibiting a Colombian vibrancy to the tradition of tango was not the only significance of the concert, but also to stand in the shadow of the Daniel Binelli.

Tango music, and especially bandoneón music, is a treasured art form. Like any magical tradition that began more than a hundred years ago, it also begs sustained recognition and a renewal of youth dedicated to artistic passion. The outpouring of emotional gratitude that Parra dedicated to Binelli onstage was a testament to the living strength of the musical tradition, and the role of such festivals as "Shall We Tango?" to inspire younger generations to fill the shoes of the living greats, so they can see their work continues before passing on towards the realm where Troilo listens in repose.

As a prelude to the festival run, Binelli and Parra played music of perhaps the most famous proponent of tango music, Astor Piazzolla. Binelli himself played in a late-career sextet with Piazzolla, a testament to his due reverence. To listen to Libertango performed by a living master of the instrument is a rare, indefinable experience for music lovers, and truly all cultural enthusiasts alike. The bandoneón expanded and contracted with piercing lament and bleary-eyed cheer, evoking the unforgotten lives of countless artists from a bygone European countryside, who fled to Argentina only to suffer unspeakable oppression. Still, they sing violently through a wine-filled hourglass in the creaking wooden bars south of the Tropic of Capricorn. At the lift and fall of the bandoneón, finally crashing at the knee of a founding father of such music, there is tragic hope in creative reprisal.

None so characteristically represented this swaying of time, and memory than in the transition from the Binelli-Ferman Duo to the Quinteto Tango. While much of the presentation was purposed to focus on musical performance, as expressed by the charming Polly Ferman, as she stood from her piano bench to speak between opening sets, four dancers sparked a tremulous fire in onlookers, inspiring with a scintillating wonder. Rousing the well-attended Symphony Space to their feet, Ivan Ovalle and Gina Medina, who also arrived from Colombia, and on their own dime, let it be known, enthralled with voluptuous and sultry finesse.

All in all, it was a night of homages, and splendid in more ways than one. Binelli himself dedicated Images of Buenos Aires in three movements to Polly Ferman, who he charismatically referred to as "faster than the wind". The Binelli-Ferman Duo also played two of Astor Piazzolla's pieces from Suite Troileana, as a special homage to Troilo through Piazzolla's devotional compositions. In the same way that a musician must give the better part of his or her life to the study and refinement of the inveterate complexities of bandoneón music, so the original, founding masters who opened new pathways for creative expression in the enigmatic styles of tango are to be honored for successive generations until the last, prolonged note.

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