This is episode 5: a super hip arrangement of a very old tango standard called “El Entrerriano”.

There was a time before my jazz career when tango was the most important music in my life. I was obsessed with understanding the style techniques for the different instruments, the harmony and the arranging/orchestration techniques.

One group in particular had me completely captivated: the Octeto de Buenos Aires which was a very avant garde tango group led by Astor Piazzolla in 1955. The idea was to take old tango standards and arrange them in a fusion style which can be seen as a combination of tango, jazz and neoclassicism (Stravinsky, Respighi, etc.).

At that time most tango lovers hated his arrangements because they were simply too modern and not danceable at all! The group didn’t last long and the story goes that Piazzolla burned all his scores in frustration (not sure that’s true). Fact is there are no scores so I did what I had to do and I transcribed a bunch of those tunes note for note, which as you probably will hear is really a loooooot of work but totally worth it!

bandoneon 1 – Santiago Cimadevilla (Argentina/The Netherlands)
bandoneon 2 – Christiaan van Hemert (The Netherlands)
violin 1 – Derk Lottman (The Netherlands)
violin 2 – Andrea Karina Bentivoglio (Argentina/The Netherlands)
guitar – Christiaan van Hemert
piano – Margreet Markerink (The Netherlands)
bass – Joel Locher (Germany)

N.B. I know someone is gonna say “…octeto? isn’t that 8 people, I see only 7 people in the video…” Yes indeed, nice catch! In the original there is also a cello, but if you listen to the original recordings the cello is really not audible anywhere! The times that I might have perceived a note somewhere I just put it in the left hand of one of the bandoneons!