Antologia del Tango at LeMoyne College

Antología del Tango will be presented on Wednesday, February 15^th at 7PM in the Grewen Auditorium, LeMoyne College. Los Tangueros: Gina Sikora (soprano) and Stephen Wilson (piano), will be joined by Argentinean dancer Joaquín Canay and the Tangueros dance ensemble. Gina Sikora, an adjunct professor at TC3-Cortland and a teacher of spanish in the Syracuse City School District and Stephen Wilson professor in the Performing Arts Department at Cortland State, have put together a program that features the vocal music of Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla, Discépolo, Villoldo, Donato, Matos Rodriguez, Marianito Mores and others.

Gina Sikora and Stephen Wilson have given concerts both at SUNY Cortland and Cornell University on the music of the poet Garcia Lorca, Agustín Lara, Manuel de Falla and others. In January 2005, they presented a lecture/concert performance on the music of Astor Piazzolla in San Jose, Costa Rica. The February 15th concert will feature an anthology of the most beloved masters of the tango, especially those of composer, actor and singer Carlos Gardel.

Carlos Gardel was born in the city of Toulouse, France in 1890. Moving to Argentina with his mother at the age of 2, Gardel became a well know singer of folk songs by the age of 16. At 26 he began to incorporate tangos into his repertory. At the age of 35, he made his first recordings at the Teatro Goya in Barcelona (1925). Together with lyricist Alfred Le Pera, Gardel would write his most popular tangos, such as “Cuesta Abajo”(Going Downhill) and “Volver” (To Return). In 1935, as an immensely popular composer and singer of tangos, he starred in films made in New York such as “Tango Bar” and “Tango on Broadway”. In June 1935, Carlos Gardel was killed in a plane crash while on tour in Colombia.

Astor Piazzolla was born in 1925, during the rise of Gardel’s popularity; and grew up hearing his father play tango recordings made by Gardel and others. By the time Piazzolla became a working musician, however, it seemed to him that the tango was no longer growing, but had become a ponderous tradition. Piazzolla then combined the tradition of tango with non-traditional harmonies and rhythms to produce music that caught the attention of such renowned composers as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky. Although hailed in many countries as a bold and original composer, his popularity seemed to be the lowest in his native Argentina, where some believe he contributed to the demise of the tango, rather than to its further development.

The music of these and other composers will be interpreted by dancers led by Joaquín Canay, who combines classical training and an authentic Argentinean tango style. Larisa and Valentin Kuznetsov, and Vera Sasonova are all natives of Russia who became so fascinated with the tango that it has become part of their lifes. Joaquín Canay is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina who has studied dance under Oscar Caballero. He has performed in Seattle, Miami and San Francisco, and continues to teach and perform in New York City and the Finger Lakes Region. His style of dancing tango uses the traditional “close embrace” that comes from the salons of Buenos Aires.

The concert promises to be a revealing look at the music of the tango as it is interpreted both by the musicians and the dancers. Admission is free. For further information, contact the Foreign Languages Department at LeMoyne College: Raquel Romeu at (315) 445-4349, and check the website http://LosTangueros.Org.