The New Tango

The New Tango is a collaboration between Astor Piazzolla and the American vibraphonist Gary Burton, recorded live at the Montreux Festival in July 1986 and released on Atlantic in 1987 with Nesuhi Ertegun producing. With Piazzolla and Burton were Fernando Suárez Paz on violin, Pablo Ziegler on piano, Horacio Malvicino on guitar and Héctor Console on bass. David Richards was the recording engineer, and Don Puluse and Burton mixed it.

All the pieces were written by Piazzolla over some 40 years, except Vibraphonissimo, which he composed expressly for Burton. Reviewer Adam Greenberg noted that there were "a mere three rehearsals prior to the recorded performance" and wrote that the vibraphone is perfectly suited to the tango. He ended by quoting Fernando González: "There are no lines drawn and no sides to defend. This is new tango." The longest pieces, Milonga Is Coming and Laura's Dream, each run close to twelve minutes.

Robert Christgau, writing about a later Piazzolla record, said Piazzolla has even less to do with jazz than Burton does, and is closer to Bartók the composer than to Ellington the orchestrator. In 1996 Burton played Violentango with Chick Corea and Danilo Pérez at a tribute concert called Astortango.