Cuarteto D’Coté marks 30 years of sax-driven tango at the CAFF.

Thirty years of tango with four saxophones

Cuarteto D’Coté turns 30 and celebrates this Friday, October 30, at 8 pm at the Club Atlético Fernández Fierro (CAFF), at Bustamante 772, in the Abasto neighborhood. The Buenos Aires group stands for a particular way of approaching the genre, with four saxophones up front, and it put together an anniversary night with guest musicians.

The permanent lineup brings together Cecilia Dottore on soprano sax, alto sax and clarinet, Nicolás Porley on alto sax and clarinet, Gustavo Hunt on tenor sax, bass clarinet and arrangements, and Martín Pantyrer on baritone sax and bass clarinet. For the celebration they are joined by a list of well-known names from the music scene.

Gustavo Musso, a member of Escalandrum, will play saxophone. Mariana Diez will be on piano, Gerardo De Mónaco on double bass and Roberto Decarre on trumpet and vocals. The percussion group Siré Siré Escuela de Tambores also takes part, adding drums to a night conceived as a collective celebration.

What they play and how the orchestra grows

Friday's repertoire will run through the quartet's whole discography, which consists of three albums: Tango, Saludos and Briyo. The night will also feature a guest singer, according to Hunt, who writes the group's arrangements.

The other novelty is the return of D’Coté Orquesta, the expanded format with which the ensemble leaves its usual four-piece setup behind for one night. That format adds trumpets, trombone, saxophones, piano and double bass, so the CAFF stage will hold far more instruments than the saxophones the group usually performs with.

Hunt said he finds it curious to think that he has belonged to the same musical project for more than half of his life. For him, the date is a good chance to look back and see how far the ensemble has come since the first tango arrangements written for saxophones.

European tours and landmark Buenos Aires stages

In thirty years the quartet has made four tours of Europe and played in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Poland and Austria. On the local circuit it has appeared at Notorious and Café Vinilo, two well-known live music venues in Buenos Aires.

Its path through the city includes the Festival Internacional de Tango and FIMBA, the Buenos Aires international music festival. Among the most prestigious spaces where it has performed is the Salón Dorado of the Teatro Colón. It also played the hall of the Teatro San Martín and, inside the Centro Cultural San Martín, the Sala AB.

The group also gives talks and masterclasses on how to play tango with wind ensembles. Those classes focus on the technical side of the genre and on what the saxophone can express within it.

What the members say

Pantyrer, who is also part of Escalandrum, the jazz group led by Daniel Piazzolla, recalled how the project began. It all started with a musical curiosity about playing in a more chamber-like way, until Hunt's tango arrangements began to appear. Over the years, he told Infobae, he has come to see that it is “not a saxophone quartet playing tango, but a tango quartet with saxophones”.

Dottore is the newest member: she joined in November 2022 and made her live debut in February 2023. She holds the sax 1 chair, which the group fondly nicknames the cursed seat because it is the most melodic and the most exposed. Before her it was played by Daniel Lifschitz, Sergio Palestrini and Patricio Bottcher, and also by Musso. She explained that she usually carries almost all of the violin melodies and a good share of the bandoneon variations.

Porley, for his part, said that reaching 30 years makes him proud, because what they imagined came true and lasted. He noted that the project had cycles of lower activity and periods of renewed energy, and described the group's present as “a good mix of maturity and vitality”.

If you go

The anniversary concert is this Friday, October 30, from 8 pm, at the Club Atlético Fernández Fierro (CAFF), Bustamante 772, in the Abasto. The source consulted does not give ticket prices or a sales channel, so it is worth confirming with the club before heading out.

On stage there will be four permanent saxophonists, the guests Gustavo Musso, Mariana Diez, Gerardo De Mónaco and Roberto Decarre, the Siré Siré drum school and the D’Coté Orquesta. The repertoire covers the group's three albums: Tango, Saludos and Briyo.