tangoaustralia.com.au - Tango Noir & Ruth Roshan

Tango Noir & Ruth Roshan

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Tango Noir led by singer Ruth Roshan has performed at a number of venues around Melbourne and at the annual Buenos Aires Beach Festival held in January in Victoria. When the band performed in Sydney for the first time on March 7 TangoAustralia thought it was time to find out a bit more about this tango band. We asked Ruth Roshan (pictured) to tell us more...

And you will have to go to their website to find out just where they are playing in Sydney!

I was born... in London and studied Genetics at Monash University (something to "fall back on"). I started learning mandolin when I was five or six though and would perform some weekends with a mandolin chamber group (Concordia Camerata) throughout school and uni. It wasn't until about 1997 that I realized that I needed to be performing in order to be happy and slowly I started to take it more seriously. I played and toured with mandolin/guitar duo, Nougat, for many years and started singing about 5 years ago for the sake of variety during our performances. I also started writing music for the duo.

I first discovered tango music ...in my parents' record collection. They had both lived in France during childhood and had many records from there. The founder of Concordia Camerata loved tango and there were quite a few in our repertoire (La Cumparsita, Tango of the Roses etc.) Then it all changed for me when I went to France in 1993 ... we decided to go to a jazz club but that night they had an orchestra from Argentina who were playing Tango ... it was one of the best nights of my life. They played ‘Adios Nonino' and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

My favourite tango composer/orchestra is ... Piazzolla and my favourite Piazzolla is from the 70s. So expressive and his descending lines are so moving, and his harmonies are stunning and not afraid to be dissonant in places which, to me, adds meat to the bones of it.

The modern tango orchestras I enjoy most are ... I wish I knew the name of that orchestra I saw in France (but them!). Also "Dark Waters Tango" from here in Melbourne ... they made a CD and launched it but haven't performed since. I like Gotan Project ... I don't mind loops and beats and their instrumentalists (especially the Bandoneonista) are superb. On the other side of the spectrum Melingo is dark and gritty (which I also like).

Tango Noir was set up after at least a year of thinking about how, as a mandolinist, I could make it work. I wrote and first recorded "Last Drive in Marseilles" in 2006 and was encouraged as it was picked up by an LA publisher and had even been used in an episode of "Everybody Hates Chris". I approached Amir Farid (piano) to plan a concert here in Melbourne and, to my relief, he was keen. We sat down together and planned it ... then I wrote and arranged the music. Our CD has exactly the pieces from that concert (first made as a demo).

The other members of the orchestra are ... Amir Farid on piano. Then there are a number of professional musicians who play with us on cello, violin and accordion (depending on where we are and who's available). For example, our Sydney concert on March 7 features Anatoli Torjinski on cello, Robert Sek on violin and Lukas Maio on accordion. I sing and play mandolin.

Our repertoire ranges from... my own tangos and valses to standards like ‘El Choclo' and ‘Jealousy' to fresh arrangements of Piazzolla and even a "habaner-ification" of a Leonard Cohen song.

The most exciting thing about tango music today is... everything is so easily available, where it used to be hard to get contemporary Tango recordings (even if you could work out what to look for)! For example, I accidentally came across a couple dancing to Piazzolla's Soledad on Youtube and now I have his Lumiere' CD from Austria via Amazon. By the way this is the link to that video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXDK18mMhLE

You can find out more about Tango Noir and their gig's on the website http://www.ruthroshan.com