REDWOOD TANGO ENSEMBLE

Contemporary tango ensemble active in Oakland, California, from 2010-2022.
Featuring Daniel Fabricant, Elyse Weakley, Ishtar Hernandez, Mia Bella D’Augelli, Anton Estaniel, Elyse Ader, Clare Armenante, and Ben Thomas.

Redwood Tango Ensemble is a leading North American sextet dedicated to contemporary tango music. Known for visceral and powerful stage performances and innovative original music, Redwood Tango Ensemble is a singular voice within the new generation of cutting edge tango composition and future-driven chamber music in North America.

Redwood Tango Ensemble has debuted compositions with Chamber Music Northwest Festival in Portland, with San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and performed on concert bills with Kronos Quartet, Friction Quartet, Tango Sin Fin, Diego Schissi, and many others. RTE was the featured orchestra for Chicago Tango Week 2013 and 2015, and has performed for milongas in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Montreal, NYC, and dozens of cities in between. With over 100 performances every year, the ensemble has become an institution in the bay area creative music and tango scenes.

QUOTES:

“Bandoneonist and composer Charles Gorczynski, along with Redwood Tango Ensemble, are forging a distinctly new idiom of American tango music.”
- Morgan Luker, program director, Tango For Musicians, author, “The Tango Machine”

“This music behaves like a dream—the changes in tone and tenor present themselves unexpectedly, and the causal relationships, if any exist, are shrouded in mystery. But dreams possess a certain, inexplicable logic, and Charles Gorczynski achieves this by employing the melody as a common thread to tie the different stages of Prizefighter into a single vision. This absorbing music is at its best when it transitions between states of chaos and a uniform drone. That it happens to be Prizefighter’s best quality isn’t surprising, since Gorcynski’s past in the free jazz scene speaks directly to his talent at creating shapes without structure and inciting a state of hypnosis with the wave of a note. This new direction is a nice surprise, and from an artist that is known for them.”
- Dave Sumner, Best New Music Bandcamp, June 2018

“Redwood Tango Ensemble’s music is beautiful and dynamic – there’s no one quite like them on the scene, tango or otherwise. Their fluency in multiple genres has caused music aficionados to draw comparisons with the famed Kronos Quartet”
- Berenika Palys, Casa Romantica San Clemente

"The Redwood Tango Orchestra is what every tango organizer dreams of: a completely danceable orchestra, with a huge repertory, great energy, and super intuition for what keeps the milonga going. These guys bring a care, attention to detail, and passion for the music that is inspiring to dance to — or more simply said— I couldn’t sit down!" - Korey Ireland, Ko-Arts 2015"

Passionate and talented musicians..." - San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Truly one of the most exciting tango ensembles active in the US today." - Morgan Luker