We are Vito Sputnik, an Argentinean tango duo consisting of a small but strong formation: bandoneon and piano. We are part of a new generation of tango musicians from the city of Rosario, which had its origins in the Orquesta Escuela de Tango. New ensembles, new arrangers and composers, new festivals and milongas, new friends, on the banks of the mighty Paraná River, with its brown waters, its merchant ships and its profile of islands.

Since we came together in 2011, we have performed extensively around Argentina and its neighbouring countries. In 2022 we made our first tour in Ireland and Scotland and in 2023 we repeated it. We performed for dancers in Milongas throughout the territory but also in different listening venues like the Kaleidoscope Nights in Dublin, the Mountshannon Arts Festival or in Portumna’s Christchurch with the Irish string set Treo Ensamble.

Our instrumental repertoire takes up the compositions of the Orchestras of the first half of the 20th century, when tango was mixed in the streets, in the lives of the people, and the lyrics still brought some countryside notes. We would like to bring all those sounds back.

AGUSTINA TABORDA / Bandoneón

She started dancing tango when she was very young and immediately fell under the spell of the bandoneon. Was it from the breaks and figures of the dance, from its micro movements, that she now makes those minimal notes sound as if they were little birds, or launches a long, round and blue note, or marks a determined and sharp rhythmic like a knife duel but pressing those randomly distributed buttons?

Agustina Taborda is an Argentinean bandoneonist based in Galway, Ireland. In 2014 received her degree in Bandoneón in the Rosario National University, studying under the bandoneonist Alicia Petrollini. She received a Rosario Government Grant for taking private Lessons with the bandoneonist Federico Pereiro in Buenos Aires (2012), and a National University Grant to perform as a solo bandoneonist in different events from the University (2013). She specialized in the instrument taking workshops with Cholo Montironi, Daniel Binelli and Rodolfo Mederos, among others. In 2017 Agustina was invited to represent the Rosario National University in Morocco, playing bandoneón in the Hispano – Luso Institut, Mohammed V University. After moving country to relocate in Ireland, she received a Bursary from Galway Arts Council (2019) to work in her first solo album “I bhfad ar shiúl” (released in 2020), and a second one in 2022 to work in her second solo álbum in process: La Reina: Dissection. She formed part of numerous Tango ensembles and collaborated with many projects of original music. Some of them are Rodney Owl (2020-2024), Jamie Toomey (2017-2022), Por Mercurio (2021-2022), The Curly Organ (2018-2020), May fly to the moon (2018-2019), Duelo Criollo (2016), Bajomundo (2016), Quinteto Gabriel de Pedro (2011-2014) and Orquesta de Señoritas (2009-2010).

ERNESTO INOUYE / Piano

He began to play music on his grandmother’s piano and listened to his mother play throughout his childhood at home. Does he still remember the sonorities of those old polychrome and yellowish scores, tangos, milongas, zambas, paso doble, that were stacked over the piano?

Ernesto Inouye is an Argentinean pianist and accordeonist. He began taking piano lessons at the age of eight at the Instituto Promúsica de Rosario. Later he studied classical piano under pianists Adrián Pistono, Víctor Cortés and Víctor Parma. He began his career as a tango pianist in the Orquesta Típica Carlos Quilici (2010), and soon after formed the tango duo Vito Sputnik with bandoneonist Agustina Taborda. He was the pianist of the tango treo Mercurio (2014), of the rock band Sergio Ivanovich Orquesta (2016) and of the instrumental quintet La doble trampa mortal (2021-2023). In 2016 he composed the soundtrack for the animated series Verdadera Verdad, directed by Andrés Almasio, in collaboration with Lautaro Vial. As an accordionist, he was part of the duet Billy Pilgrim (2014), the circus orchestra Sarrasani (2015) and collaborated on the album Vitrales (2018) by Tomás Boasso. For the last ten years he has been working as a music tutor, teaching piano and accordion. Ernesto is a graduated Professor of Literature from the National University of Rosario. In addition to his music activity, he works as a literature researcher, teacher and editor.