Camarada’s Exciting Week of Tango Performances Open at UC San Diego Park & Market
By Ken Herman, San Diego Story
(l. to r.) Igancio Varchausky, Andrés Martín, Beth Ross Buckley, Dana Burnett, Pablo Jaurena, and David Buckley [Photo by Monique Feil]
Camarada, the San Diego chamber music ensemble, has a longstanding love affair with the music of tango. Camarada performs its music regularly, and the ensemble has frequently traveled to South America to encounter this rich musical tradition in its native environment.
Tuesday at UC San Diego Park & Market in the East Village, Camarada inaugurated their current project: The International Art of Tango Festival II, a weeklong tango festival. Tuesday’s wide-ranging program included early Argentine tango masters such as Peregrino Paulos and Ángel Villoldo, a work by the internationally recognized Astor Piazzolla, and the première of Atmospheres by the contemporary Argentine tango luminary Pablo Jaurena.
A virtuoso bandoneon player as well as composer, Jaurena scored his three-movement Atmospheres for bandoneon and flute. Commissioned by San Diego arts patrons Gary and Zoraida, Jaurena chose three local landmarks as inspiration for each movement of the work: “Sea Refractions” inspired by the coastal ambience of La Jolla; “Ochre Haze” by the Spanish architecture of Kensington, and “Blue Wind” by the sea breezes of Coronado.
In the first movement, Beth Ross Buckley’s suave, cantabile flute themes hovered over Jaurena’s gentle bandoneon chords. In the second movement, Jaurena’s meandering phrases suggested a quiet stroll in this tony suburban neighborhood, and in the more assertive final movement, bracing staccato bandoneon chords accompanied breezy flute caprices.
From Andrés Martín, Camarada’s double bass player and regular featured composer for the ensemble, we heard his “Heartfulness,” a trio from his 2020 commission Unstoppable. A quiet impressionist meditation, Martín’s movement offered shimmering themes for flutist Beth Ross Buckley, violinist David Buckley, and Martín on double bass.
For an experience in unusual instrumentation, Martín and guest bassist Ignacio Varchausky played the late Leopoldo Federico’s “De Tal Palo.” Cleverly arranged for dueling bassists by Martín, this piece begins as an assertive ballad that takes its time getting to a rousing tango pulse. Martín offered as a double bass solo Carlos Cobián’s 1936 ballad tango “Nostalgias,” a poignant ballad that would have been more telling with the lyrics by Enrique Cadícamo, which we did not hear. Although many of the noted tango composers were bandoneon players, Cobián was a pianist.
Camarada opened its concert with “A Evaristo Carriego” by Eduardo Rovira, a bandoneon player and composer whose ensembles were popular in the mid-20th century. The song’s lyrics, also by Rovira, give tribute to the noted Argentine poet of an earlier era, Evaristo Carreigo. Martín’s arrangement gives generous solos to Camarada violinist David Buckley and pianist Dana Burnett.
The same quartet of Camarada musicians that played “A Evaristo Carriego” David Buckley, Beth Ross Buckley, Andrés Martín, and Diana Burnett, gave a lush account of Piazzolla’s popular 1982 “Oblivion,” replete with the composer’s inimitable gorgeous, bittersweet themes.
Appropriately, the concert closed with “El Choclo,” a vibrant tango by Ángel Villoldo, popularly acclaimed as the “father of the tango.” Although “El Choclo” was well-received in Latin America soon after it appeared in 1903, later in the last century it was given English lyrics and retitled “Kiss of Fire.” Recorded by many U.S. artists from Louis Armstrong to Georgia Gibbs, Villoldo’s music of “El Choclo” as “Kiss of Fire” achieved international fame.
And the six musicians of Camarada gave the instrumental “El Choclo” a rousing sendoff!
This concert was presented by Camarada at UC San Diego Park & Market in San Diego’s East Village on February 24, 2026. The Tango Festival continues in various local venues through February 28, 2026.