Ástor 2020, La Historia Continúa

This year marks 100 years since Astor Piazzolla’s birth in Mar del Plata, Argentina. This album is a timely homage for the centenary, but its title alludes to La Histoire du Tango, a 1986 Piazzolla composition that surveyed the tango story over four 30-year periods (1900,1930, 1960 and ‘today’). As a new instalment, Astor 2020 is utterly fitting, offering 11 new compositions by as many different artists, ranging from a soloist to a full tango orchestra, and exploring tango’s potential for renovation through a variety of treatments.

A pared-down, pulsating acoustic arrangement (‘Faro’), jazzy variations (‘La Tomajena’), mellow piano and string exercise (‘Pantaleón’) and bleeping synth duelling with metronomic bandoneón and rocking percussion (‘Ciberespacio 2020’) drag tango into the 21st century. Guitarist Adam Tully, who produced the album in Buenos Aires, leads his own trio on the meditative ‘Trilonga 2020’. That he is an American expat shouldn’t surprise anyone; tango is a global urban folk genre, and Piazzolla himself needed to escape Argentina to revive it and smash up some dusty icons. Too long owned by tourist spectacles, ballroom dancers and tired traditionalists, tango needed a record like this. Piazzolla never copied anyone and nor do these brave, talented musicians.