Fugata - Coamorous Trio

The Coamorous Oriental Tango Project is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and have a stated mission to "introduce a higher level of Tango to as many people as possible." And judging from their website and posted videos, "higher level of Tango" means largely the music of Astor Piazzolla. Based on their sound, they have a good chance of meeting their mission. Others agree: the group won first prize at the 10th Osaka International Music Competition. Members of the group include leader and pianist Andrey Vinichenko, violinist - Anna Fedotova, accordionist - Alexander Sheykin and bassist, Garan Fitzgerald. Bassist Fitzgerald is absent in today's video performance of Fugata but can be seen with the group in their performances of Libertango and Escualo. The musicians are quite talented and capture well the nuevo tango spirit of the music.

Fugata is from a three part suite composed in 1968 which is referred to by two names - Tangata and Silfo y Ondine. The Azzi/Collier book, Le Grand Tango, contains two comments about the suite - one that it was written for a never released documentary movie about the tango and the other that it was written to honor the spirit of air, Sylphe, and the spirit of water, Ondine. Perhaps both apply but certainly, Fugata and the other two parts of the suite, Soledad and Final, are well constructed pieces of music. Fugata opens as a eight bar, four part fugue which is developed through the first 2 minutes of music. Interestingly, the last minute of music is, while thematically similar, quite different in the two versions recorded by Piazzolla. The first, in 1969 on the Trova LP, Adios Nonino, closes with a relatively simple "expiring clock" motif while the second recording, made almost twenty years later in 1988, La Camorra, closes with a complex and agitated musical escape attempt. The performance in today's video is very much in the original 1969 mode.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.