Astor Piazzolla

Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla was born March 11, 1921, and grew up with the bandoneon, the accordion's melancholic cousin and the tango's signature voice. Where tradition demanded nostalgia and close-stepping romance, he heard room for something harder and stranger. He began folding in jazz rhythms and classical composition, constructing what became known as nuevo tango - a hybrid that purists despised and that concert halls eventually couldn't ignore. A virtuoso on his instrument, he performed his own works with rotating ensembles, writing and arranging relentlessly. By 1992, the year he died on July 4, an American critic called him "the world's foremost composer of Tango music" - a title earned by refusing to leave the form alone.