Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble

ABOUT THIS EVENT

With its mesmerizing style and sound, the award winning Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble has captivated audiences with soulful arrangements of Argentine tango standards and original compositions that create a dynamic tango and pan-Latin fusion. The musicians in the group each have rich and extensive experience in Argentine tango, jazz, classical and contemporary music, and other world and popular music styles, all of which can be heard on their debut recording, The Other Side of My Heart.

“The Not Your Average Folk Contest " Grand Prize Winner-2021" and "World Music” category winners of NC Museum of Art 2021, the LGTE is currently recording its second album Tango Diaspora.

Based in North Carolina, the group has been committed to collaborations and concerts with some of the Triangle and Triad “milongas” and tango-dance organizations: “Durham-Tango” and “Alma-Tango” (WS), with which it has shared the stage in many occasions in concerts, festivals and workshops. There has been also a continuous community engagement with the most prominent Latino organizations of the region, such as Casa Azul of Greensboro and the Hispanic League of Winston Salem; the ensemble's recording reflects that commitment. Developed by Lorena Guillén (lyricist/vocalist) and Alejandro Rutty (composer/bass player), The Other Side of My Heart, is an oral-history musical piece based on interviews with six Latina immigrants to NC. The women’s testimonies became the lyrics of six songs, and fragments of their recorded voices can be heard throughout the piece.

Over the years, the ensemble has presented its music in national and international stages: NC Folk Festival, Kleinhans Music Hall and the Calumet Arts Café in Buffalo, NY; MusicBox Theater and Folk Research Center (Saint Lucia, West Indies) Frick Museum Summer Concerts (PA), Center stage Series at the Sangre de Cristo Auditorium (CO), Winston-Salem’s annual FIESTA Festival, the Hispanic League’s “Colorful Sounds in Concert” and the Music Carolina SummerFest; in Durham for the Mallarmé Chamber Players; Triad Stage’s UpStage Cabaret, and the Music For-A-Great-Space series; at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum Summer Concert Series; High Point University, Georgia Southern University, and in greater LA at Alvas Showroom, LA Harbor College and Crafton College.

With Lorena Guillén, voice and artistic director; Alejandro Rutty, piano and bass; Jacqui Carrasco, violin; Guy Capuzzo, guitar; Adam Ricci, piano; Erik Schmidt, percussion

Lorena Guillén, vocalist and artistic director

Lorena Guillén, vocalist and artistic director, has become a figure of the Tango scene in US by presenting with her Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble imaginative programs that center on, but also expand, the notions of traditional tango standards and “new” tango.

From her childhood, Lorena remembers being mesmerized by the sounds of her grandfather's tango and opera recording collection and discovering the major figures of the Argentinian folk by attending with her father various festivals. Those experiences cultivated her musical passion and lead her to express herself through singing in this wide array of styles with the most natural flexibility.

Lorena brings her long musical experience, on diverse stages at the national and international level, as a classically trained singer, popular song interpreter and music director, traveling as far as Kathmandu (Nepal) and taking her own Durham-Chapel Hill choir in tour to Argentina (August 2015). She has presented concerts at such venues as: Kleinhans Buffalo Symphony Circle (NY), Fricks Museum-Summer Concert Series (Pittsburgh, PN), Chautauqua Institution (NY), “New Music New Haven” of Yale University (CT), Music Gallery at Toronto (Canada), Shakespeare Theater (Wash. DC), Music-at-the-ForeFront (OH), Stockhausen Music Festival (Germany), MusicBox Concert Series (Saint Lucia, W.I) and Puerto Rico University.

Lorena has received two Notable Latina Awards from the Latino Coalition of the Triad, and awarded artist grants from NewMusicUSA, Arts Greensboro through their "Regional Artist Award" and a Diversity Mini-Grant from University of North Carolina-College of Visual and Performing Arts.

As a “tango” scholar, Guillén is the author of the articles on “Tango” and "Astor Piazzolla” published in the Grove Dictionary of American Music (2nd ed.), on Argentine female tango singers of the 1920s and 1930s, and on oral-history in music for the International Review Journal of Music and Music Performance. She regularly presents lecture-recitals on “tango” related topics in conferences and university venues.

Guillén has recorded for Innova Records, University of Arizona Recordings, and Kindermusik, including her tango albums, The Other Side of My Heart, with her own Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble, her previous Never Too Tango, with the participation of notable guest artists of the tango and "classical" scene, such as double-bass player Pablo Aslan, bandoneon player David Alsina and the Amherst Saxophone Quartet.

Guillén has been faculty at State University of New York-Buffalo, Hartwick College (NY), Artist in Residence at the Saint Lucia School of Music in the Saint Lucia island (West Indies), and is currently teaching at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is the musical director of the Triangle Jewish Chorale since 2011, a community regional choir of more than 50 members.

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