Valeria Matzner: vocals
Aparna Halpé: violin
Suhashini Arulanandam: violin
Esme Allen-Creighton: viola
Sybil Shanahan: cello
Shannon Wojewoda: bass
Elizabeth Acker: piano
Eva Wolff: bandoneón

Tango is the poetry of a city: the the music of passionate fate. DISTANCIA by Solidaridad Tango takes you on a journey from the despair of the pandemic to a celebration of the love and hope that kept us going through our darkest hours. “Distancia” is the Spanish word for “distance”—-this album captures the way people reach across boundaries of place and space, bridging the vast distances from Toronto to Buenos Aires to Kandy in Sri Lanka through music and poetry. 

The album is an emotional roller coaster – a searing portrait of our times and a riotous answer to the divisions that keep us apart. The English lyrics and poetry by Aparna Halpé are unique in the world of tango, where songs are written almost exclusively in Spanish. They capture issues of homelessness, anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination, and the universal experiences of love and loss that haunt us all. Halpé’s compositions are a unique synthesis of multicultural musical influences, while being situated clearly within the language of tango.

The album celebrates emerging women tango composers such as Pétalo Selser and Eva Wolff, while also tipping its hat to the iconoclast of contemporary tango, Julián Peralta. DISTANCIA ends with a poetic land acknowledgement, signaling the band’s commitment to reconciliation practices, an approach further demonstrated in the powerful album art by Oneida visual artist Mo Thunder.

DISTANCIA rocks out with tango, rock, candombe, murga, milonga, and vannam rhythms and melodies, embodying the diversity of this band of women who are changing the face and sound of tango. Described as “bringing tango forward” by Laura Fernandez, host of Jazz FM 91’s Café Latino, this album by Canada’s all-woman tango band is a passionate embrace of life and death, and of the kind of inspiration that arrives at 3AM in the morning, wherever you are in the world.

solidaridadtango.ca

Release Date: Friday, November 17th, 2023.