It is (almost) a rule that there are musicians who – despite the talent they had – did not get the recognition they deserved. In Argentina, the best example of this was Eduardo Rovira, a key avant-garde tango composer often mistakenly considered to be “the other Astor Piazzolla. ” The Belgian ensemble SONICO, created in Brussels in 2015, is the only group (globally) dedicated to recovering & performing the music of Eduardo Rovira.
Originally a quartet, SONICO has now become a multinational 10-member ensemble, one of the few modern tango orchestras in Europe. The group has not only distinguished itself for its approach to historically informed performance in tango music, but also for its archival research work: the transcriptions carried out by SONICO have recovered both lost and unreleased repertoire. The systematic recovery of these contemporary classics, combined with the instrumental and stylistic perfection of SONICO’s musicians, is something that did not previously exist in tango music.
Thanks to SONICO, there has been an important re-evaluation of Rovira’s key contributions to modern tango. Although Rovira was a contemporary of Piazzolla, his musical path developed in another direction; he managed to be radically original. Unfortunately, Rovira died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1980. Despite creating very personal music rich in ideas, his music fell into obscurity after his death.
In August 2018, SONICO’s first album Eduardo Rovira: La Otra Vanguardia, the first album exclusively dedicated to the work of Eduardo Rovira since his death in 1980, was released at the Tango Festival BA (Argentina), during SONICO’s first tour to Latin America. The group’s second album, Eduardo Rovira: Inédito e Inconcluso was released in March 2020. The result of a major research effort, this album was based on manuscripts and never-before edited or released material recorded by Rovira in 1976.
SONICO has developed a strong artistic relationship with the choreographer Lisi Estarás (Les Ballets C de la B/ Alain Platel), resulting in the dance creation MY HEART IS THE MUSCLE THAT WE LIKE TO WORK OUT, which premiered at De Grote Post (Ostend). This project was also presented at Les Plateaux (2020 edition) in Paris and programmed at the Royal Flemish Theater (Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg).
In March 2021, SONICO paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of Astor Piazzolla’s birth at the Klara festival / BOZAR, Center for Fine Arts Brussels. This concert, broadcast on Belgian public television, was the most watched of the entire festival. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, SONICO was able to undertake a second Latin American tour (Ecuador and Colombia) in September 2021, in order to present Eduardo Rovira: Inédito e Inconcluso.
This tour was followed by the release of SONICO’s third album, Piazzolla-Rovira: The Edge of Tango, launched with a live concert at the Minardschouwburg (Ghent) and broadcast all over Latin America by the Film & Arts Channel. This album not only recovered lost material (Piazzolla burned the scores; Rovira’s original scores were damaged by a flood), but also presented, for the first time together, the music of the Octeto Buenos Aires (Piazzolla) and the Octeto La Plata (Rovira), key groups at the forefront of modern tango. Piazzolla-Rovira: The Edge of Tango was presented by a Benelux tour of more than 40 concerts between October 2021 and June 2023.
In September 2022, SONICO took part of A BIGGER THING, a creation of the choreographer Lisi Estarás and the season-opening production at the Opera Ballet van Vlaanderen Ghent. This creation with 60 dancers was the first staging of the ballet “Tango Buenos Aires” by Eduardo Rovira. For this production, SONICO collaborated with the musicians from the Opera Ballet van Vlaanderen Orchestra. After this production, SONICO returned to Argentina and traveled to Brazil for the first time on their third Latin American tour.
During the upcoming season SONICO will release their fourth studio album, entitled Five, six, seven, eight… The Edge of Tango vol.2, at BOZAR Center for Fine Arts Brussels on 19th Januari 2024. The concert will be followed by a Benelux tour, where SONICO will perform in a number of the most renowned festivals and concert halls including Ode Gand (De Bijloke), Iedereen Klassiek (Concertgebouw Bruges), De Roma Antwerp and the Philharmonie Luxembourg.
The musicians adding their unique musical perspective to this highly difficult repertoire include: Lysandre Donoso (FR/CL) bandoneon; Carmela Delgado (FR/SP) bandoneon; Stephen Meyer (USA/BE) violin; Daniel Hurtado Jiménez (SP) violin; Kaat Verheyen (BE) violin; Bartosz Korus (POL) viola; Guillaume Lagravière (FR/BE) cello; Alejandro Schwarz (AR/FR) electric guitar; Ariel Eberstein (AR/BE) double bass; Ivo De Greef (BE) piano
Instead of trying to create a controversy between Piazzolla and Rovira, SONICO wants to share the wonderful period known as avant-garde tango with the public. Although Eduardo Rovira and Astor Piazzolla employed different approaches to renewing tango music, they both worked tirelessly to free the music from traditionalism. Their actions had lasting effects on the history of the genre and even today we can consider their creations to be some of the most interesting music ever produced in Argentina.
“Sonico is dedicated to bringing Rovira’s work to a wider audience. For those who pleasure in Piazzolla’s music, Rovira’s should prove similarly gratifying if not a revelation (Sonico has released two terrific albums, with a third on the way) (…) Perhaps it’s because Piazzolla broadened the parameters of what tango can be that we’re now able to appreciate Rovira’s genius as well.”
Stephen Meyer is a Belgian-American violinist. Originally from Lynchburg, Virginia (USA), he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts with special honors in music and in French literature. During his third year at Yale, he had the opportunity to study French literature in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, as well as violin with Olivier Charlier of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM) de Paris.
Afterwards, he continued his music studies in the classes of Roland Daugareil and the Ysayë Quartet at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris-CNR, where he obtained his Diplôme d’Etudes Musicales Supérieures. He is also a recipient of the Diplôme de Concert from the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he studied with Jean Lénert. Following his studies in Paris, Mr. Meyer was Assistant Principal Second Violin of the orchestra of Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, the National Belgian Opera, in Brussels from 2007 until 2021.
Since 2014, Mr. Meyer has become a prominent tango violinist, educator and researcher. In 2016 he graduated cum laude with a Masters of Music in tango violin from Rotterdam Conservatory (Codarts) in the Netherlands, having studied with Gustavo Beytelmann; he was awarded a grant from the Codarts Friends of Music Foundation for excellence in musical performance, as well as first prize at both the Codarts and Fontys Artistic Research Festivals for his research on tango techniques in violin performance. In January 2019 Mr. Meyer was named professor of violin in the tango department at Codarts. Currently, he is undertaking a PhD on the role of the violin in tango at the world-renowned Royal College of Music in London (UK), where he is a Doctoral Bursary recipient. He will begin teaching at the Royal College of Music in January 2022. As a researcher, Mr. Meyer has been invited to speak at many universities and conferences, including the Universidad Católica Argentina, the Royal Musical Association, the American Musicological Society, and the Teatro Centro de Arte León Febres-Cordero (Ecuador).
As a violinist, Mr. Meyer has played around the world, including performances in Europe, North America and South America. He currently performs in many ensembles, including the Latin Grammy-nominated OTRA, Tango Por Tres, and most notably the quintet SONICO, named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the seven most prominent modern tango ensembles today. He has played in many prestigious festivals, including Klarafestival (Belgium), Tango for Musicians (USA; Dresden, Germany), Tango BA (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Tarbes en Tango (France). In addition, Mr. Meyer has a growing discography, including a number of albums recorded with SONICO – the first of which, Eduardo Rovira: la Otra Vanguardia, was selected by Billboard magazine as one of the top 10 tango albums of the year – Cyclamen, recorded with the Grammy Award-winning pianist Fernando Otero, and Vivio: Dreams from the Past, with Vivio, Mr. Meyer’s Brussels-based string quartet.
Lysandre Donoso is now a reference in tango and one of the most requested bandoneonists in Europe. He’s been accompanying many theatrical works and operas, one with the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse; he is playing as a soloist in the Orchestre National de France, and in several European projects; he performs in some of the greatest halls in Europe like the Royal Albert Hall (London), the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), the Salle Pleyel (Paris), the Bozar (Brussels) and the Berlin Konzerthaus.
Donoso was born in 1990 from a Chilean father and a French mother. He played his first instrument, the violin, at the age of 6 in the Conservatory of Lyon. The following year he entered the accordion class of Patricia Hivert until his diploma in 2009. Thanks to the bandoneon he inherited from his grandfather, he began to be passionate about tango. Lysandre took lessons with Hervé Esquis from 2008 to 2011, he created his first ensemble “Nonino Quartet” and he also took part in the musical tango workshop directed by the Silencio Orchestra and Ramiro Gallo in Tarbes for several years.
During the summer of 2010, Lysandre decided to stop his engineer studies in Grenoble INP and dedicate himself to the music. He took lessons with renowned musicians as William Sabatier and Per Arne Golrvigen. He joined the Tango Department of the Conservatory of Rotterdam (Codarts) in 2011, under the teaching of Gustavo Beytelmann, Víctor Villena and Leo Vervelde amongst others.
In parallel of his studies, he has been multiplying the professional experiences: the Silbando Orchestra, the Quinteto Emedea, Roulotte Tango, the Grand Orchestre de Juan José Mosalini, Quatuor Caliente, the Silencio Orchestra directed by Roger Helou, Lalo Zanelli, Sónico, etc..
Lysandre does not limit himself to the tango world. He was accompanying a theatrical work about Frida Kahlo’s life with the company Art Toupan during 2 years. He played in two different operas by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht : “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” with the Capitole Orchestra in Toulouse and “The Threepenny Opera” in the Théâtre Déjazet in Paris. He played as a soloist in several European projects like Mr McFall’s Chamber, Ballare : To Dance, the “Misa a Buenos Aires” from Martín Palmeri, the Sinfonía Buenos Aires with l’Orchestre National de France…
Ivo started playing the piano at the age of six. After obtaining a Master of Music degree at the Brussels Conservatoire (where he studied with Jan Michiels), he moved to the UK to further his studies with Philip Martin at the Birmingham Conservatoire and spend two years specialising in tango music at the Rotterdam Conservatoire with Gustavo Beytelmann and at the Conservatoire Edgar Varèse in Paris with Juan José Mosalini.
His wide and eclectic taste has led him to be involved in different projects across various genres of music. Ivo has collaborated with artists such as Frederic Rzewski, Misia, Evan Parker, Henri Demarquette, Joe Broughton, Edward Watson, Wendy Whelan and Keith Lewis and has featured regularly on European radio stations (BBC, Classic FM, Klara, Antena 2, Radio France, Radio 4 Hilversum…). His 2021 10-part radio series about Astor Piazzolla for Belgian radio station Klara received a lot of praise.
He performs both as a soloist (with his own “Tribute to Keith Jarrett” project and “Leftitude”) and as part of different ensembles (Noszferatu, Quinteto El Después, Micha Molthoff, Juanjo Mosalini Quinteto, SONICO, Tangophonics) at major venues and festivals throughout Europe, the USA, Japan and South America.
Ivo also appeared in the musical line-up to the 2002 award-winning West-End play “Humble Boy” by Catherine Jones and was co-founder and Musical Director of the London Tango Orchestra. Most currently he has been part of the Opéra du Rhin successful production of Piazzolla’s opera Maria de Buenos Aires (2019-2022).
Aside from his activities as a performing musician, Ivo is in high demand as a workshop coach and also teaches music history in Brussels. He was part of the jury for the prestigious Astor Piazzolla Award 2020 music competition.
Was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1979 and discovered the double bass at the age of 16. In 1997, he began studying the double bass in Buenos Aires with Miguel Angel Villaroel. Soon, his commitment to this instrument deliver him in 2002 a scholarship from the Fundacion Antochas (Buenos Aires) to study in Vienna with James Rapport and Andrew Ackerman.
Later on he moved to Belgium in order to continue his studies at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels with Frank Coppieters, where he completed his master’s degree after an year exchange Erasmus program at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag in 2010 with Quirijn van Regteren Altena. After his formal studies he continues improving his musical skills through masterclasses and private lessons, particularly interested in the Romanian double bass school.
He has worked with many world-famous conductors and has been playing in the most important Belgian orchestras such as the Vlaamse Opera, National Orchestra of Belgium, De Filharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège, Opera Royal de Wallonie, De Munt/La Monnaie and Brussels Philharmonic.
Ariel has given concerts in the most important concert halls of Europe and America, including the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Musikverein and the Concerthaus (Vienna), Festspielehaus (Salzburg), Cité de la Musique (Paris), Bozar and Flagey (Brussels), Polin (Warschaw), (London), (Edinburgh) and the Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires).
Since 2014 Ariel specialize in avante-garde Tango founding the Brussels based ensemble SONICO. In July 2018, SONICO went on tour to Argentina to present their first album “EDUARDO ROVIRA: LA OTRA VANGUARDIA” in Buenos Aires as part of the Tango BA Festival as the main international guest at the festival. In March 2019, the European release of SONICO’s album took place at BOZAR/Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels as the only European group invited to the concert series “100 YEARS OF TANGO.”
At the moment, Ariel Eberstein develops a strong artistic relation with the choreograph Lisi Estaras. In July 2018 They worked together at the Workshoops from Les Ballets C de la B (Gent, Belgium) and in August 2018, Estara’s production “SAPIENS RABIA” at the San Martin theater ballet (Bs As, Argentina) counted with a solo double bass recording as part of the music. Their collaboration from October 2018, untitled “D-EFFECT” for 3 young female dancers, 2 dancers with down syndrom and a double bass player” from Paserelle vzw (Kortrijk, Belgium) includes Ariel Eberstein first stage performance experience. In March 2020 Eberstein and Estaras created MY HEART IS THE MUSCLE THAT WE LIKE TO WORK OUT, the first dance creation inspired by the music of Eduardo. This work went on première in De Grote Post (Oostende, Belgium).
In Februari 2017 and 2018, Ariel Eberstein has been the curator-artist of the Tango evening during the POLIN Festival in Warschaw (Poland) with a programe that rescue the important role of judaism for the development of the Tango.
Ariel Eberstein recorded Fernando Otero´s (four time Grammy award-winner) last album “Ensamble” in December 2018. He also performed as part of Mr Otero’s European tour 2017 . In july 2018 Mr. Eberstein got invited by, the world famous pianist, Martha Argerich to be part of the closure concert at her festival in Hamburg.
In December 2019, Ariel Eberstein recorded SONICO’s second album “EDUARDO ROVIRA: INEDITO E INCONCLUSO”. On the same year Eberstein participated in the festival “Le Printemps du violon” together with the bandoneonist Olivier Manouri in Paris. He was also invited to the POLIN festival in Warsaw as the artist/curator with a program around the influence of Judaism in the tango.
In 2021 He made his first Russian presentation during the “SUMMER EVENINGS IN YELABUGA” directed by Boris Berezovsky. That same year Eberstein, together with SONICO, celebrated the centenary of Astor Piazzolla with the pre-release of his third album, “PIAZZOLLA – ROVIRA: THE EDGE OF TANGO” during the Klara Festival in BOZAR and was hailed as the most watched concert of the whole festival. The official release of ‘Piazzolla-Rovira: The Edge of Tango’, was broadcasted by Film & Arts throughout Latin America.
In September 2022, Eberstein will be part of A BIGGER THING, the open-season production of De Vlaamse Opera (Ghent).
Alejandro Schwarz was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began his professional
career as a rock guitarist at the age of 18, but then later became interested in tango music
after he met Anibal Arias, Rodolfo Mederos and Chocho Ruiz, teachers from the tango
department of the EMPA who encouraged and supported him. Schwarz studied not only
tango music, but also harmony and counterpoint with Gustavo Beytelman. Passionate about
tango from the past, Alejandro never ceases to imagine the future of this music.
In 1996 Alejandro founded and joined a key group in the modernization of tango, the
orchestra “El Arranque” (Argentina) , with several national and international tours. In 2001
“El Arranque ” was invited to the Lincoln Center where they performed with Winton
Marsalis. He recorded two CDs with this group : “TANGO” [Vaivén, 1998] and “CABULERO”
[Epsa, 2000] which essentially brought together his arrangements and compositions for this
ensemble. Later on, Schwarz became involved in many other projects such as “34
Puñaladas” (Argentina) and Quinteto “La Bordona” (Argentina).
In 2001, he moved to France and later founded, together with the bandoneonist Victor Hugo
Villena, the Quinteto El Después. Together with this group he toured in Europe and Japan,
collaborated with the singer Misia and with cellist Henri Demarquette, and released four
albums: “COMO UN TREN” [ 2011] “CALLES LEJANAS” [ 2012] “LIVE” [ 2013] and
“TOGETHER”[ 2014].
Mr Schwarz has accompanied, arranged and recorded for singers like Silvana Deluigi
(Argentina),Haydée Alba (Argentina), Anna Saeki (Japan), Julia Migenes (United States),
Debora Russ (Argentina), Claudia Pannone (Argentina), José Luis Barreto (Uruguay), amongst
others. These collaborations extended his discography which also includes: “CANTO DE
SIRENA” / ANNA SAEKI & TIEMPO SUR [Rentrak, 2001]; “LA ARGENTINA” / JULIA MIGENES
[TREMA, 2003] “OMOI” / ANNA SAEKI (Rentrak Japan Co. Ltd., 2003); “YO
VENGO A OFRECER MI CORAZON” / ANNA SAEKI live concert (Moon music Ltd., 2009) and
“TANGOS PENDIENTES”/ Debora Russ [ 2013]
Alejandro has composed and arranged both traditional and modern tango in his own
projects for more than twenty years. Furthermore, he has composed and arranged for other
groups and artists such as: orchestral arrangements for the BBC Orchestra (England), Zurich
Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland), Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie and a Double
Concerto For Bandoneon and accordéon requested by the Grand Avignon Conservatory
(France). His compositions have been performed in prestigious festivals such as: the Tango
Festival in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Loch Shiel Spring Festival (Scotland), Moritzburg
Festival (Germany), and in the BBC series Discovering Music, among others
