Cuarteto Rotterdam

Today, concert halls and international tango festivals like in Amsterdam, Berlin und Paris and even Buenos Aires, the US and Canada can no longer be imagined without these four musicians who have always been able to inspire both concert-goers and tango dancers. Brought into being in 2004, the ensemble was named after its birthplace in the Netherlands, where, at that time, the three founding members, Michael Dolak, Susanne Cordula Welsch and Judy Ruks, were studying tango at the Rotterdam Academy for World Music. 2007 they moved together to Germany. Nowadays they are living in Berlin, Stuttgart and Paris. Cuarteto Rotterdam is tango – full of passion, virtuosity and power – taking into account of more than 100 years of tango history. Being conscious of this tradition, they perform the early and more cheerful kind of tango music from the Guardia Vieja era with such ease that it makes everyone want to dance. In a compact quartet style, they present the Golden Age of tango from the 1940’s with the highlights of the grand orchestras a la Di Sarli, Troilo, D’Arienzo, Pugliese or Salgán. They feel so close to the challenging Tango Nuevo of Astor Piazzolla that the heartfelt melancholy and complexity of this music is noticeable all the time. And they are curious – curious about the new aspects of tango. In searching for the tango of the 21st century, they have included contemporary Argentine and European tango pieces in their concert and dance programme.