Astor Piazzolla
| Astor Piazzolla | |
|---|---|
Astor Piazzolla with his bandoneon, 1971
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla |
| Born |
March 11, 1921 Mar Del Plata, Argentina |
| Died | July 4, 1992 (aged 71) Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Genres | Tango, nuevo tango, jazz, Latin jazz, world music |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, arranger |
| Instruments | bandoneon |
| Years active | 1933–1990 |
| Associated acts | Anibal Troilo, Nadia Boulanger, Roberto Goyeneche, Edmundo Rivero, Amelita Baltar, Gerry Mulligan, Pino Presti, Tullio De Piscopo, Horacio Malvicino |
Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (Spanish pronunciation: [pjaˈsola], Italian pronunciation: [pjatˈtsɔlla]; March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles.
In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost composer of tango music".
Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1921, the only child of Italian immigrant parents, Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. 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 Tuscany.
In 1925 Astor Piazzolla moved with his family 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 soon learned to take care of himself on the streets despite having a limp. 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.
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