Modern Tango World N° 8 (Moscow, Russia) | Page 28

Jonathan Goldman
— Quartango
interview by
Marco Buso
Quartango is a Canadian musical project born more than thirty years ago and still strong and healthy thanks to its
wonderful musicians, who continue to this day to experiment a unique mix of tango, classical and jazz music, blending
together three of the greatest musical traditions of our world in exciting new ways. We at Modern Tango World had
the pleasure to talk with Jonathan Goldman, bandoneonist of Quartango
MTW: Jonathan, first of all let me thank you very
much for being here and talking a bit about Quartango
with Modern Tango World.
Jonathan: Thanks to you Marco! A pleasure to be here.
MTW: Let’s start from scratch. We would like to know
something about your musical background.
Jonathan: I was born in Toronto and studied piano
at the Royal Conservatory of Music as a boy. In high
school, like many teenagers, I taught myself to play the
guitar and played the bass in a rock band. For university,
I moved to Montreal and attended McGill University,
studying philosophy and mathematics. I did find time
however to make music: I composed and conducted
the score of a student film while I was there.
After university, in 1995, I spent a year travelling, and
had a formative experience when I heard two Molda-
vian accordionists performing in Jerusalem: I realized
that their was a tradition of highly expressive and vir-
tuosic accordion playing, something that many North
Americans are not aware of. Later, I bought my first
accordion, and found a wonderful teacher in the Ro-
manian jazz accordionist Marin Nasturica, who lives in
Montreal.
The accordion led me to the tango and to the music
of Astor Piazzolla — a very conventional progression.
I’m not claiming any originality here! I fell deeply in love
with tango music and yearned to learn the bando-
neon. By that time, I was involved in intense graduate
studies in musicology at the Université de Montréal,
where I am now a professor of musicology. I thought
that learning the bandoneon would distract me from
my studies. However, in 2001, I did publish an arrange-
ment of Piazzolla’s Double Concerto for bandoneon,
guitar, piano and optional double bass. Around 2003, I
founded a tango band: it was called Sweatshop Tango
and was a Piazzolla-style tango quintet, except with
accordion instead of bandoneon. In 2004, we put out
a CD called De la Main á  la Boca and we performed
at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2007.
It was about a year or two before this that I began
performing on the bandoneon, which is today the only
instrument I perform with. At the same time, I started
performing with Quartango, and went with them on
a tour of the U.S. and Canada. Around the same time,
I finished my PhD in Musicology and got a job on the
west coast of Canada at the University of Victoria
and had to leave Quartango. In 2011, I published a
book about Pierre Boulez. I must be the only tango
musician who has written a book about Pierre Boulez!
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