My preferred blog on Bloggers is blocked in China, so I have to start one on MSN, much to my reluctance, otherwise I can't see what I've written!

March was a special month in 2007. Meeting Ignacio Varchausky, band leader and contrabajo player of El Arranque during the HK Arts Festival, has taken my appreciation of tango music to a deeper level.

Aside from his busy schedule with El Arranque, Ignacio started another project, namely "Escuela de Tango", in 2000 trying to preserve and revive the different styles of music from the golden era. It's not a school where you go to learn to plug the bandoneon, violin, or piano. Instead it is an orchestra in which accomplished young musicians learned to play the styles of the 40's from living and aging maestros who played in the orchestras of D'Arienzo, Di Sarli, Pugliese, Gobbi, Triolo, etc.

It wasn't easy to find funding for the project. With persistence, Ignacio finally found support from the government and persuaded maestro Emilio Balcarce, an acclaimed arranger, composer and band leader who had played with Edgardo Donato & Pugliese in the 30's and 40's and had his own successful orchestra later, to lead the Orquesta Escuela De Tango. The 2 of them brought in other maestros to share the ways & tricks of their styles - the accents, nuances, "clicks" and "saws" that made the sounds of those orchestras so unique...Orquesta Escuela de Tango now has 2 successful albums which you can find on www.tangostore.com.

The journey of Orqesta Escuela de Tango was also beautifully captured on video by Ignacio's film maker wife Caroline Neal. The video title "Si Sus Brujo" is the name of one of Balcarce's many great compositions. More about the documentary later.