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El Taller Latino Americano The Latin American Workshop Sunday, June 30 - 6 pm OTERO X-TANGO TRIO This evening will feature the Otero X-Tango Trio: Fernando Otero - piano Hector del Curto - bandoneon Pedro Giraudo - bass Fernando Otero's music is unmistakably bonded to the expressive roots of the language of Buenos Aires. These elements are the Tango and its predecessors, the Milonga, either in its southern style, slow and melancholic, or in its agile urban dance form, as well as the Murga. Meshing his roots in traditional music with modern rhythms, Otero has created a very personal style and unique language presented in his albums X-Tango (1990), Revision, Escenas, and Siderata. Otero's music has been well received by audiences and critics alike both in Europe and the USA. He has written music for film and theater, with premieres in the U.S., Europe, and South America. He has performed in more than thirty countries. Among the venues that he has played are Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Glenn Gould Studio (Toronto), and Teatro de la Villa de Madrid. Fernando Otero was born in Buenos Aires into a family of musicians, receiving his first singing and piano lessons from his mother, Elsa Marval, a renowned Opera singer and pianist. He grew up absorbing the influences of traditional tango and folklore, as well as classical music, and Jazz. From the beginning he studied piano, harmony, and composition until he begun his master classes of orchestration and conducting with Domingo Marafiotti (resident conductor of the Symphonic Orchestra of the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires). His special interest in Argentine folklore brought him to the study of the characteristic instruments like the bandoneon, guitar, charango, acordeon, and percussion. Otero started writing for piano, choir, string quartets, and brass quintets. He incorporated the use of the bandoneon in most of his compositions. Dominique Denis in his review for L'Express de Toronto wrote... In X-Tango, composer-pianist Fernando Otero liberates the tango from the kind of rigid romanticism perpetuated in the Broadway-style productions that have become the main tango reference for so many people. Without betraying the fundamental passion of the tango, Otero pushes the boundaries of the idiom, both structural and orchestral. This allows him to convey the dichotomy at its very core -- highly civilized yet somehow untamed. A courageous and mature work, X-Tango is for those who dare to follow the tango down new paths, in these post-Piazzolla years". Back to Schedule