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Ep73: What’s next for the 28-year-old ensemble QuinTango? Founder Joan Singer shares the Story Tango Tells

Today on Elaine’s Literary Salon: Meet violinist Joan Singer, the founder and director of QuinTango. Managing the group combines Joan’s flair for storytelling and weakness for glitz with her love of music and travel. Before founding QuinTango, she played at Inaugural Balls, backed up Aretha Franklin, and was a tenured member of the Baltimore Opera Orchestra.

About QuinTango: For the last 28 years, the group has performed from a Command Performance at the White House to memorable concerts in 29 states and across 3 continents, at venues ranging from Stanford University and Lincoln Center Plaza to churches in Appalachia and Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston.

The ensemble has performed at international festivals in Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay and the Amalfi Coast—and toured in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Argentina and Uruguay. In 2019, the group expanded its repertoire to include original tangos and vocals, both made possible by the addition of new personnel. QuinTango’s commitment to education, community engagement, and global partnerships, coupled with their personal performance style, has built a devoted community of fans worldwide. With 90+tangos on Spotify and 8 CDs, QuinTango’s music streams 20K times a week on six continents.  QuinTango’s next album, VIDA, will be released in 2027.

Good news: The event was sold out for the September 23 performance at Blues Alley for Argentinean Jazz Week: Blues Alley Hispanic Heritage Jazz Month. Quintango previewed its new album at Blues Alley, the premier jazz supper club in the country, which today is called a “listening room”

Coming in 2027: Quintango’s new album features music by ensemble members Emmanuel Trifilio and Ali Cook.The guest artist on the album, Mariana Quinteros, is a Latin Grammy-nominated artist from Argentina now living in Miami

Bring QuinTango home: QuinTango’s music is available on all streaming platforms (Apple, Spotify, Pandora, etc) and can be purchased digitally at Bandcamp. Learn more about QuinTango andjoin its mailing list for alerts about new projects, overseas travel opportunities with the group, or upcoming concerts: quintango.com.

Meet QuinTango’s musicians:

Ali Cook, bass and vocals, is a multi-talented singer/songwriter, arranger, instrumentalist and teacher who is equally comfortable touring Europe as a bassist with the National Symphony or performing on 6th street in Austin with her band, Ali & the Wild Geese. She performs regularly with the Detroit Symphony and is on faculty at Opal Studio in Alexandria.

Hai Jin, piano, is an active concert pianist, chamber musician, and orchestral soloist who has performed over 200 recitals throughout United States and Asia. Dr. Jin pursued her DMA at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in Piano Performance with a cognate area in Orchestral Conducting. She is on faculty at Peabody Conservatory in the Preparatory School.

Joan Singer, violin, founder and director of QuinTango, combines her flair for storytelling and weakness for glitz with her love of music and travel. Before founding QuinTango, she played at Inaugural Balls, backed up Aretha Franklin and was a tenured member of the Baltimore Opera Orchestra.

Regino Madrid, violin, is a member of the National symphony Orchestra, Sound Impact Collective and the Chiarina Chamber Players in DC, as well as concertmaster of The American Pops Orchestra. For twenty years he performed at the White House as a member of “The President’s Own,” the U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra.

Emmanuel Trifilio, bandoneon, discovered a bandoneon in a second-hand shop in his native Argentina, launching his love affair with tango. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and with orchestras throughout the USA and Cuba. His “Tango Poesia,” the intimate sub-genre of tango created by Trifilio and championed by QuinTango, has been a source of inspiration for both fans and the band.

A little history: QuinTango’s through the years

In the 1990s, three of QuinTango’s original members were touring in Holland with a classical chamber music group when they met a young Dutch bandoneon player who invited them to a rehearsal with his tango band. The impact of that night was so strong that upon returning to the U.S., they immersed themselves obsessively in the tango manuscripts the generous Dutchman had given them.

After two years of experimenting with instrumentation, they created QuinTango, produced a CD (1998), and set out to introduce U.S. audiences to tango music. Tango was an outlier in the domestic music scene. Tango music was not available in U.S. music stores, and yet, to the group’s amazement, they discovered an audience of International tango lovers in D.C. After their first Kennedy Center performance, an 80-year-old Turkish gentleman tearfully told them he had waited twenty years to hear tango music in the U.S. That was the moment they realized QuinTango’s fusion of classical chamber music and Argentine tango, later dubbed “chamber tango” by their Argentine arrangers, was off to a good start.

Over the years, QuinTango recognized the arts’ ability to bring diverse groups together and the role QuinTango’s music could play. Presenters reported that QuinTango concerts brought in new audiences. Classroom experiences showed music’s ability to unify diverse groups. Today QuinTango’s revised mission is to create and nurture local and global community through music.

International partnerships are key to this mission. The group works with cultural offices, educational institutions, festivals, museums, small-town mayors, and local arts patrons to create musical bridges. They created a Fans & Friends program to bring fans along on overseas tours, providing “backstage” access to cultural experiences not available to tourists.  August 2026 marked their 13^th Fans & Friends tour with 2 weeks in Costa Rica that included dinners at private homes, a conversation with the former president of Costa Rica, and personal encounters with artists.  One State Department partner dubbed the group “artist diplomats.” “We have to say ‘no’all the time; you all with your music are saying, ‘yes,’ and showing the positive side of our country,” the consul general told them. As musicians, tangueros, and artist diplomats, QuinTango continues to expand its mission, its repertoire, and its global community.

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About our host, Hope Katz Gibbs, journalist, author, podcast/video producer, and PR director at Elaine’s Literary Salon: A journalist since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, Hope’s articles have appeared in dozens of publications including The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, Costco’s Connection, The National Press Club, Beach Life magazine, and more. She has won numerous journalism awards for her writing, including her book, PR Rules: The Playbook. Hope founded Inkandescent PR + Publishing Co. in 2008 and, over the decades since, has promoted the work of hundreds of authors, artists, educators, and entrepreneurs. She publishes three online magazines: InkandescentWomen.com • BeInkandescent.com Health & Wellness magazine • InkandescentKids.com. Her company builds websites and produces more than 30 podcasts each month on InkandescentRadio.com, which gets more than 1 million hits/month; the video versions of the shows are featured on Inkandescent.tv. Inkandescent® also publishes books: Find those titles on her PR website, Inkandescent.us.

About ElaineLiterarySalon.com: In 2024, Hope partnered with bestselling thriller novelist Jeffrey James Higgins, founder of the project and the regular host of the series. The podcast show ranks #1 on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for literary salon shows. Watch all of the videos in the series on YouTube at ElainesLiterarySalon.tv

Find Elaine’s Literary Salon events here: ElainesLiterarySalon.com

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