Scottish Tango Ensemble

A small but, as one might say, perfectly formed audience gathered in Whiting Bay Hall last Sunday afternoon and were enraptured by the four young players of the Scottish Tango Ensemble. Fiona Macleod, (piano), Gemma O’Keefe (violin), Paul Chamberlain (accordion) and Tom Berry (double bass) produced a rich and exciting variety of music that often sounded as though far more than four players were on the stage.  Tango is a highly exotic rhythm that originated in the Candombe religious ceremonies of Bantu people from Africa brought to the plantations of Argentina and Uruguay as slaves. It evolved into a dance form that quickly spread across North America and Europe, and the extraordinary thing about it is the tremendous range of styles and emotional states that it can convey.

The performers in Whiting Bay moved seamlessly from flirtatious decorum to Latin American passion, and throughout the programme, returned to the music of Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine composer and bandoneón player who revolutionised the form after studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. His ‘new’ tango can by turns be erotic, angry, heart-breaking and utterly beautiful, and the audience was entranced. The four pieces that make up Piazzolla’s ‘Seasons’ sequence are technically dazzling and full of evocative expression. ‘Autumn’, with its falling phrases on the accordion to a slow bass beat, was particularly magical. Throughout, the players demonstrated a brilliant state of individual accomplishment and an almost uncanny empathy between them made their performance spell-binding. Everyone who heard them (and loudly demanded an encore) went out feeling moved, excited and privileged