Joe Schittino

Sdebitango

Dance is gesture, movement, and expression. This is especially true of the tango, a dance with a rich history and a variety of musical moods. As such, the tango is a musical style that doesn’t really align with Joe Schittino’s compositional style. When the composer was asked to write a tango for flute and guitar, he decided to capture the "spirit" of the tango and shift its focus from sensuality to lightness, from social urgency to timeless humor, transforming emotions into thoughts and musical symmetry. The apparent simplicity of "Sdebitango," with its classically inspired three-part form, actually conceals a dense counterpoint in which each of the two instruments constantly switches roles between protagonist and accompanist. This takes place in a ceaseless interplay of shifting accents, polymetry, and an ironic thread that, in the slower middle section—permeated by subtle melancholy—reveals the essence of the whole: What words cannot express, the music says.