Le grand tango

"Astor Piazzolla was a musical genius, a man who used the national dance of Argentina as raw material for a whole new musical genre. In Le Grand Tango, Maria Susana Azzi and Simon Collier vividly capture the life of this extraordinary musician - a visionary who won worldwide acclaim but sparked bitter controversy in his native land." "Azzi and Collier trace Piazzolla's early life from his birth in Argentina in 1921 to his childhood years on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he first developed a talent for the bandoneon, the accordion-like instrument central to the tango. They describe his return to Argentina at age sixteen and his rapid rise in the intoxicating world of tango, where he quickly earned a place with the leading dance band and then formed his own group. But at the height of his success, Piazzolla decided to take tango music to a new level and studied composition with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Azzi and Collier show how he created a dramatically new style of tango music influenced by jazz and classical pieces - a tango music meant for listening, not dancing. But they also show that in the birthplace of the tango he met fierce resistance. He eventually left Argentina for Europe, where he emerged as an international celebrity."--Jacket.