A MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY ABOUT ASTOR PIAZZOLLA

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

“That’s Not Tango” may seem like an odd title for a musical biography about Astor Piazzolla. After all, no other composer did more to pluck tango out of the seedy, seething bars it was associated with and translate it into sophisticated concert music bursting with erotic energy. But this show, which opens at SubCulture on Wednesday, June 22, seems willing to question everything.

Written by Lesley Karsten and Stephen Wadsworth, it assigns the part of Piazzolla to a woman — Ms. Karsten — in a twist that plays on the quicksilver exchanges between male and female partners in tango. In between narrated stations in Piazzolla’s biography, from his birth to Italian parents in Argentina to his childhood in New York and back again, are musical performances by a stellar lineup. Among them, the bandoneon player JP Jofre, the pianist Brandt Fredriksen and the violinist and fiddler Nick Danielson.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/arts/music/a-musical-biography-about-astor-piazzolla.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FClassical%20Music&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=collection&_r=0