No mistakes in the tango

Tango in Boston has (had) been a 50-measure sketch waiting for an occasion for some four years.

Similarly, I had the first (five minutes, was it?) of Out in the Sun composed, for the longest time . . . waiting its time for fruition.

In both cases, I bless the delay. The piece as ultimately realized is (in both cases) richer than if I had pressed on to finish the sketch at the time of origin.

Part of the ‘unfinished business’ of Tango in B included the need to incorporate actual tango artifact in the piece. That actually reaches beck yet further, to a school-year I spent in Weatherford, Oklahoma . . . when my Wooster mate Jeff Wallace sent (from Finland, or from Ohio recently returned from Finland?) a cassette of Tango: Zero Hour.

I was not going to aspire to become a tango composer or performer, but from the immediate attraction I felt to the power of Piazzolla’s idiom, I knew I should want to find a musical environment for an hommage.