Childhood Piazzolla was born in
Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1921, His paternal grandfather, a sailor and fisherman named Pantaleo (later Pantaleón) Piazzolla, had immigrated to Mar del Plata from
Trani, a seaport in the southeastern Italian region of
Apulia, at the end of the 19th century. His mother was the daughter of two Italian immigrants from
Lucca in the central region of
Tuscany. In 1925 Astor Piazzolla's family moved to
Greenwich Village in New York City, which in those days was a violent neighbourhood inhabited by a volatile mixture of gangsters and hard-working immigrants. His parents worked long hours, and Piazzolla, despite having a limp, soon learned to take care of himself on the streets. At home he would listen to his father's records of the
tango orchestras of
Carlos Gardel and
Julio de Caro, and was exposed to
jazz and
classical music, including
Bach, from an early age. He began to play the
bandoneon after his father spotted one in a New York pawn shop in 1929. After their return to New York City from a brief visit to Mar del Plata in 1930, the family moved to
Little Italy in lower Manhattan. In 1932 Piazzolla composed his first tango, "La Catinga". The following year he took music lessons with the Hungarian classical pianist Béla Wilda, a student of
Rachmaninoff, who taught him to play Bach on his bandoneon. In 1934 he met Carlos Gardel, one of the most important figures in the
history of tango, and played a cameo role as a paper boy in his movie
El día que me quieras. Gardel invited the young bandoneon player to join him on his tour. Much to Piazzolla's dismay, his father decided that he was not old enough to go along. In 1954, he and his wife left their two children with Piazzolla's parents and travelled to Paris. Piazzolla was tired of tango and tried to hide his tango and bandoneon compositions from Boulanger, thinking that his destiny lay in classical music. Introducing his work, Piazzolla played her a number of his classically inspired compositions, but it was not until he played his tango
Triunfal that she congratulated him and encouraged him to pursue his career in tango, recognising that this was where his talent lay. This was to prove a historic encounter and a crossroads in Piazzolla's career. With Boulanger he studied classical composition, including
counterpoint, which was to play an important role in his later tango compositions. Before leaving Paris, he heard the octet of the American jazz saxophonist
Gerry Mulligan, which was to give him the idea of forming his own octet on his return to Buenos Aires. He composed and recorded a series of tangos with the String Orchestra of the
Paris Opera and began to play the bandoneon while standing up, putting his right foot on a chair and the bellows of the instrument across his right thigh. Until that time bandoneonists played sitting down.
In the vanguard of nuevo tango Back in Argentina, Piazzolla formed his
Orquesta de Cuerdas (String Orchestra), which performed with the singer , and his
Octeto Buenos Aires in 1955. With two bandoneons (Piazzolla and
Leopoldo Federico), two violins (
Enrique Mario Francini and
Hugo Baralis), double bass (
Juan Vasallo), cello (
José Bragato), piano (
Atilio Stampone), and an electric guitar (
Horacio Malvicino), his Octeto effectively broke the mould of the traditional
orquesta típica and created a new sound akin to chamber music, without a singer and with jazz-like improvisations. This was to be a turning point in his career and a watershed in the history of tango. Piazzolla's new approach to the tango,
nuevo tango, made him a controversial figure in his native land both musically and politically. However, his music gained acceptance in Europe and North America, and his reworking of the tango was embraced by some liberal segments of Argentine society, who were pushing for political changes in parallel to his musical revolution. In 1958 he disbanded both the Octeto and the String Orchestra and returned to New York City with his family where he struggled to make a living as a musician and arranger. Briefly forming his own group, the Jazz Tango Quintet with whom he made just two recordings, his attempts to blend jazz and tango were not successful. He received the news of the death of his father in October 1959 while performing with
Juan Carlos Copes and
María Nieves in
Puerto Rico; on his return to New York City a few days later, he asked to be left alone in his apartment and in less than an hour wrote his famous tango
Adiós Nonino, in homage to his father. Copes and Nieves packed out
Club Flamboyan in
San Juan, Puerto Rico, with "Compañia Argentina Tangolandia". Piazzolla was serving as the musical director. The tour continued in New York, Chicago and then Washington. The last show that the three of them did together was an appearance on CBS, the only colour TV channel in the US, on
the Arthur Murray Show in April 1960. Back in Buenos Aires later that year he put together the first, and perhaps most famous, of his quintets, the
first Quinteto, initially comprising bandoneon (Piazzolla), piano (
Jaime Gosis), violin (
Simón Bajour), electric guitar (
Horacio Malvicino) and double bass (
Kicho Díaz). Of the many ensembles that Piazzolla set up during his career, it was the quintet formation which best expressed his approach to tango. in 1963 In 1963 he set up his
Nuevo Octeto, and the same year premiered his
Tres Tangos Sinfónicos, under the direction of Paul Klecky, for which he was awarded the Hirsch Prize. In 1965 he released
El Tango, an album for which he collaborated with the Argentine writer
Jorge Luis Borges. The recording featured his Quinteto together with an orchestra, the singer
Edmundo Rivero and Luis Medina Castro reciting texts. In 1966 he left Dedé Wolff and the following year signed a five-year contract with the poet
Horacio Ferrer with whom he composed the 'operita' (little
opera)
María de Buenos Aires, with lyrics by Ferrer. The work was premiered in May 1968 with the singer
Amelita Baltar in the title role and introduced a new style of tango, Tango Canción (in English: Song Tango). The following year he wrote
Balada para un loco with lyrics by Ferrer, which was premiered at the First Iberoamerican Music Festival with Amelita Baltar, and Piazzolla himself conducting the orchestra. Piazzolla was awarded second prize and the composition would prove to be his first popular success. In 1970 Piazzolla returned to Paris where with Ferrer he wrote the oratorio
El pueblo joven, later premiered in Saarbrücken, Germany in 1971. On May 19, 1970, he gave a concert with his Quinteto at the Teatro Regina in Buenos Aires in which he premiered his composition
Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas. Back in Buenos Aires he founded his
Conjunto 9 (also known as
Nonet), a chamber music formation, which was a realisation of a dream for Piazzolla and for which he composed some of his most sophisticated music. He now put aside his first Quinteto and made several recordings with his new ensemble in Italy. Within a year the Conjunto 9 had run into financial problems and was dissolved and in 1972 he participated in his first concert at the
Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, sharing the bill with other Tango orchestras. at the
Summit recording,
Milan (
Italy) 1974. The image includes the producer , first from the left, and some performers, including
Pino Presti, second from right, and
Tullio De Piscopo, second from left After a period of great productivity as a composer, he suffered a heart attack in 1973. That same year he moved to Italy where he began a series of recordings which would span a period of five years. The music publisher , a partner in Curci-Pagani Music, had offered Piazzolla a 15-year contract in Rome to record anything he could write. His famous album
Libertango was recorded in Milan in May 1974. In September recorded the album
Summit (Reunión Cumbre) with the saxophonist
Gerry Mulligan and an Italian orchestra, including jazz musicians such as bassist /arranger
Pino Presti and drummer
Tullio De Piscopo, in Milan. The album includes the composition
Aire de Buenos Aires by Mulligan. In 1975 he set up his
Electronic Octet, an octet made up of bandoneon, electric piano and/or acoustic piano, organ, guitar, electric bass, drums, synthesizer and violin, which was later replaced by a flute or saxophone. Later that year
Aníbal Troilo died and Piazzolla composed the in his memory, a work in four parts, which he recorded with the Conjunto Electronico. At this time Piazzolla started a collaboration with the singer
José Ángel Trelles, with whom he made a number of recordings. In December 1976 he played at a concert at the
Teatro Gran Rex in Buenos Aires, where he presented his work, “500 motivaciones”, written especially for the Conjunto Electronico, and in 1977 he played another memorable concert at the
Olympia in Paris, with a new formation of the Conjunto Electronico. In 1978 he formed his second Quintet, with which he would tour the world for 11 years, and which would make him world-renowned. He also returned to writing chamber music and symphonic works. (center) and singer-songwriter
Jairo in Paris, 1981 During the
Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, Piazzolla lived in Italy, but returned many times to Argentina and recorded there. On at least one occasion he lunched with the dictator
Jorge Rafael Videla, as he recounts in his oral memoir: :[Interviewer:] One year before the
Los Largartos issue you went to Videla's house and had lunch with him. Why did you accept that invitation? :[Piazzolla:] What invitation? They sent a couple of guys in black suits and a letter with my name on it that said that Videla expected me a particular day in a particular place . :I have a book around someplace, with pictures of all the guests:
Eladia Blázquez,
Daniel Tinayre,
Olga Ferri, the composer
Juan Carlos Tauriello...painters, actors.... In 1985 he received the Platinum
Konex Award, and in 1995 his family received the Honour Konex Award as the most important deceased musician of the decade in Argentina. He was also nominated for the
Grammy Award and received the
César Award.
Traveling the world In 1982 he recorded the album
Oblivion with an orchestra in Italy for the film
Enrico IV, directed by
Marco Bellocchio, and in May 1982, in the middle of the
Falklands War, he played in a concert at the Teatro Regina, Buenos Aires with the second Quinteto and the singer
Roberto Goyeneche. That same year he wrote
Le Grand Tango for cello and piano, dedicated to Russian cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich, which would be premiered by him in 1990 in
New Orleans. On 11 June 1983 he put on one of the best concerts of his life when he played a program of his music at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. For the occasion he regrouped the Conjunto 9 and played solo with the
Buenos Aires Philharmonic, directed by . The programme included his three-movement
Concierto para bandoneón y orquesta and his three-movement
Concierto de Nacar. On 4 July 1984, Piazzolla appeared with his Quinteto at the
Montreal International Jazz Festival, the world's largest jazz festival, and on 29 September that same year they appeared with the Italian singer
Milva at the
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris. His concert on 15 October 1984 at the Teatro Nazionale in Milan was recorded and released as the album
Suite Punta del Este. At the end of that same year he performed in
West-Berlin, and in
theater Vredenburg in
Utrecht, in the Netherlands, where
VPRO-TV-director
Theo Uittenbogaard recorded his Quinteto Tango Nuevo, playing, among other pieces,
Adios Nonino, with as a backdrop – to Piazzolla's great pleasure – the extremely zoomed-in "live"' projection of his bandoneon playing. In 1985 he was named Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires and premiered his
Concerto for Bandoneon and Guitar (also known as
Tribute to Liège), at the Fifth International
Liège Guitar Festival on March 15, with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Leo Brouwer and
Cacho Tirao on guitar. Piazzolla made his London debut with his second Quinteto at the
Almeida Theatre in London at the end of June. With the film score for
El exilio de Gardel he won the French critics Cesar Award in Paris for best film music in 1986. He appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreux, Switzerland, with vibraphonist
Gary Burton in July 1986 and, on 6 September 1987, gave a concert in New York's
Central Park, in the city where he spent his childhood. In September 1987 he recorded his
Concierto para bandoneón y orquesta and
Tres tangos para bandoneón y orquesta with
Lalo Schifrin conducting the St. Luke's Orchestra, in the Richardson Auditorium at
Princeton University. In 1988, he wrote music for the film
Sur. In May that year he recorded his album
La Camorra in New York, a suite of three pieces, the last time he would record with the second Quinteto. During a tour of Japan with Milva he played at a concert at the
Nakano Sun Plaza Hall in Tokyo on June 26, 1988, and that same year underwent a quadruple by-pass operation. Early in 1989 he formed his
Sexteto Nuevo Tango, his last ensemble, with two bandoneons, piano, electric guitar, bass and cello. Together they gave a concert at the Club Italiano in Buenos Aires in April, a recording of which was issued under the title of
Tres minutos con la realidad. Later he appeared with them at the Teatro Opera in Buenos Aires in the presence of the newly elected Argentine President
Carlos Menem on Friday, June 9. This would be Piazzolla's last concert in Argentina. There followed a concert at the Royal Carre Theatre in
Amsterdam with his Sexteto and
Osvaldo Pugliese’s Orquesta on June 26, 1989, a live recording at the BBC Bristol Studios in June 1989, between concerts in Berlin and Rome, and a concert at the
Wembley Conference Centre on June 30, 1989. On November 4, 1989, he gave a concert in
Lausanne, Switzerland, at the Moulin à Danses and later that month he recorded his composition
Five Tango Sensations, with the
Kronos Quartet in the US on an album of the same name. This would be his last studio recording and was his second composition for the Kronos Quartet. His first
Four, For Tango had been included in their 1988 album
Winter Was Hard. Towards the end of the year he dissolved his sexteto and continued playing solo with classical string quartets and symphonic orchestras. He joined Anahi Carfi's Mantova String Quartet and toured Italy and Finland with them. His 1982 composition
Le grand tango, for cello and piano, was premiered in
New Orleans by the Russian cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich and the pianist Igor Uriash in 1990 and on July 3 he gave his last concert in
Athens, Greece, with the
Orchestra of Colours, conducted by founder-director
Manos Hatzidakis. Among his followers, the composer and pianist
Fernando Otero and Piazzolla's protégé, bandoneonist
Marcelo Nisinman, are the best known innovators of the tango music of the new millennium, while
Pablo Ziegler, pianist with Piazzolla's second quintet, has assumed the role of principal custodian of
nuevo tango, extending the jazz influence in the style. The Brazilian guitarist
Sergio Assad has also experimented with folk-derived, complex virtuoso compositions that show Piazzolla's structural influence while steering clear of tango sounds; and
Osvaldo Golijov has acknowledged Piazzolla as perhaps the greatest influence on his globally oriented, eclectic compositions for classical and klezmer performers. ==Musical style==