Arrangements

From my first tango CD purchase in 2007, I wanted to arrange tango for solo clarinet. I fell in love with the articulation styles of the bandoneons and with the lyrical melodies in the violin and vocal lines. SO much fun, SO clarinet!

I needed two main things to actualize this idea. The first would be MUCH easier music notation software than the old dinosaurs available in 2007. The second would be online access to original scores and lead sheets. And in hindsight, almost two decades of dancing and listening to this incredibly beautiful music would not hurt.

Fast forward to the availability of far better resources, I started arranging in the summer of 2023, choosing to start with the articulation of milonga. And you can guess, once I started, I did not stop. Partway through the year, I added vals, tango, and some unique cortinas to balance out the collection. By the end of this first year, I’d assembled a full and varied body of work for this original plan.

With the unplanned addition of a free piano in my studio, I started to explore adding extant piano parts to the arrangements I’d already done. Much of the tango lexicon has been uploaded and is now readily available as lead sheets, so an earlier decision to stick to original tango keys and form made adding these parts very doable. By early 2025 I had a library of clarinet and piano tangos. At this point another serendipitous chain of events led to an available space, we created our own venue and began to perform as a duo in summer 2025.

As I was doing this, I also was exploring adding a third voice. I initially was hoping for a traditional bandoneon, but I’m located too far from the cities to realistically have a regular player, and as we had already started playing our regular milonga venue, I wanted someone who would be readily available. It finally occurred to me that I know a LOT of very virtuosic clarinet players, and going back to my original concept of using the sound quality of clarinet to be the bandoneon, it made perfect sense to use another clarinet for that third voice.

This, I feel, is when I truly hit my stride as an arranger. My arrangements are unique, but artistically in balance with tradition. This is the unique and delightful challenge of working with an established art form: Staying true to the genre while adding our own color. We started performing as a trio in late 2025.

I was content with the trio, but both my bandmates AND my friends began to tell me I needed a bass. In all honesty, I’ve rarely paid much attention to strings outside of orchestral playing, so I ignored the requests for a while. By mid season, I’d say January 2026, I gave in and started exploring adding those parts to our library. I felt somewhat out of my element for a while, but now in hindsight, I am absolutely thrilled that I was pushed. We debuted our bass at our one-year anniversary concert/milonga in September 2026. What a beautiful texture the bass adds. My friends were right.

So now, it seems, I still need to start my day, every day, with a latte and some arranging. I alternate between beautiful traditional tangos and what I feel is becoming the best collection of cortinas ever. We usually have something fresh and new at each milonga. I still dance regularly at other milongas, and I’ve found the local DJ’s to be exceptionally kind in helping me track down specific versions and recordings for the next week’s arranging project.