Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble
Lorena Guillén, voice
Jacquie Carrasco, violin
Guy Capuzzo, guitar
Adam Ricci, piano
Alejandro Rutty, electric bass
Josue Valbuena, percussion

Since 2015, the award-winning Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble has captivated US and international audiences with their soulful original compositions and mesmerizing arrangements of Argentine tango standards that create a dynamic tango pan-Latin jazz-fusion. Each of its members has rich and extensive experience in Argentine tango, jazz, classical music, and other world popular music styles, all of which can be heard on their two albums, Exótica Flor (2023) and The Other Side of My Heart (2018), both available on streaming platforms.

“Not Your Average Folk Contest 2021" Grand Prize Winner (North Carolina Folk Festival) and "World Music” category winner of Music-At-the-Museum Contest 2021 (NC Museum of Art), the Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble has been featured on TV performances for NC PBS channel and Fox8News, and live radio programs: WUNC’s “The State of Things” (NPR affiliate, Chapel Hill, NC), KUNM’s “Corazón Tanguero” (NPR affiliate, Albuquerque, NM), WFDD "Triad Arts" (Winston Salem, NC), “Musicaldo” (KGLP 91.7, Gallup, NM), and Radio DAMus (Buenos Aires, Argentina). 

The ensemble has toured nationally and internationally. On September 2023, the LGTE embarked on its first concert tour to Argentina, with invitations to perform at two emblematic venues, the CAFF Festival of Alternative Tango and the Conservatorio Astor Piazzolla. They have also presented shows in US festivals such as Charlotte International Arts Festival and Winston-Salem FIESTA Festival, and various concert series: Western Piedmont Symphony (NC), Frick Museum Summer Concerts (PA), Center Stage Series at the Sangre de Cristo Auditorium (CO), Alvas Showroom (LA), MusicBox Theater (Saint Lucia Island, West Indies).

Niebla del riachuelo

Murky anchorage where they are going to land
Ships that must remain in the dock forever.
Shadows that lengthen in the night of pain
Shipwrecked of the world who have lost their hearts.

Bridges and ropes where the wind comes to howl,
Coal ships that will never set sail
Grim cemetery of ships that die,
However, they dream that they must set out to sea.

Creek Fog,
Tied to memory I keep waiting.
Creek Fog, of that love, forever,
you're pushing me away.
He never came back, I never saw him again.
Never again did his voice call my name next to me.
That same voice that said, "Goodbye."

Dream, sailor, of your old brig
Drink your nostalgia in the deaf cafe
It rains on the port, meanwhile my song
Slowly rain on your desolation
Anchors that will never, ever again, have to lift
Boat gunnels without moorings to loosen
Sad caravan without destination or illusion
Like a ship trapped in the bottle in the kitchen.

Negrito

Happy candombes# are sounding,
The party is at its best,
María that was always happiness
In all previous dances
Is now alone and sad.
Not even the dances entertain her.
Everybody is asking her to sing
And her song is a cry.

“Negrito*,
everybody is asking me to sing
and I have a pain
very deeply stubbed in my heart!”
“Negrito,
only to you I can sing!
The drums are calling you;
My cry calls you.
Why are you not coming?”

The people gets agitated,
Because the song is too sad
And want to animate the gathering
with a candombe.
But María with her sadness
Repeats like-wise praying:
“Negrito, everybody wants me to sing;
and my heart bleeds!”

* A sweet appellative given to his Afro-Argentinian lover.
# An Afro-Uruguayan and Argentinian dance and music created by slaves and performed mostly during Carnival over a set of three drums and chanting.

Cantando (Singing)

I no longer have the sweetness of your kisses,
I roam alone in the world, without love.
Another happier mouth will be the owner
of his kisses that were all my passion.

There are moments when I don’t know what is happening to me,
I have urges to laugh and to cry.
I am jealous, I am afraid that he won't return.
And I want him, I can't help it.

Singing I gave him my heart, my love,
and since he left, I sing my pain.
Singing I found him, singing I lost him
Because I don't know how to cry, singing I shall die.

Miraculous virgin, forgive me
if singing this song that lives in me
I ask you to bring me what is mine,
that so quickly and without reason I lost.

If it is a sin to love so much in this life
I ask you, on my knees, for your pardon.
I love him so much that I will die
If I lack the caresses of his love.

No vas más

When breathing,
placid ardor,
restrain cruel
the old and faithful impulse
of reinventing and of imagining
I can survive.

Long impasse that prevails.
I can't stand the idea anymore.
The inert permanence
Without a clear and certain trace.
No more, I say at last,
No more.

But I go crazy and spin
With an obsessive idea.
The impatience of things,
Nope, not resolved yet.
No more, I say at last,
No more.

When breathing,
Placid ardor.
I find in it
The essence of living,
of loving and of believing,
I can survive.

Sueño de barrilete (Kite’s Dream)

Since childhood I had
That crazy fantasy of dreaming.
It was my dream to be like a kite
That ascends among clouds
Taken by the winds of hope…up and up.

And I grew in this world of illusion,
And I heard only my own heart,
But life is not a game
And the lyricism is a bill…without value.

I always wanted to be like a kite
Gaining high altitude with my ideals
Trying to tell myself that life is something more
Than a simple plate of food!
And instead, I have been like a kite
to which the bad winds have finished.
I do not know if it was faith, will
Or maybe the short string that failed me.

In love I had only deceptions,
I offered my heart as a present for not putting it on sale.
I made verses forgetting
that life Is only hurting prose that drowns the best
opening bounds…ay! Life!
Now I am terrified of this fatigue without end.
My ideal fell in pieces.
When I see a kite, I ask myself
where is that kid now.

Los vientos me llevaron

Distant land
of gray sky,
The winds took me
far from there.

Water on the trodden path
That today is dry.
The grooves of the earth
My soul frame.

Seed of love blossomed
How to forget?
Your voice is like an echo
That makes me bad.

Agua y Vida

Ahhh…water and life…A common essence ahhhh

The sweat that perspires
I dried without thinking,
As the tears
That wet my cheeks.

Also in the blood,
Water flows in big quantities.
It grooves through my veins.
My body breathes.

It floods each cell
Of my intense heart.
Mother water feeds and protects
In the warm womb the embryo.

Ahhh, water and life through my body and the sea, ahh

It dances in slow sway
Of tides without end.
The water gets choppy with gigantic waves.

It shelters the heat
Of the sun rays.
It feeds winds.
It rains over the crops.

Oceanic currents
Of intense and vital movement
Carry small organisms,
Treasure woods of coral.

Inmensa Soledad (Inmense Solitud)

Like a wish on the air,
Like a flash of fire in the night,
An old star crossed by.
Sitting next to me,
In a sigh, you said.
With your excited mind,
you asked.

Why are we here
Far away from everybody
In the immense solitude?
Mute and dry I became.
A drowned tier in my voice.

If I were to have the answer,
I would honestly give it to you.
Perhaps I could see the direction
Of my steps at end.

But the light of that star
Only dazzles and confuses me.
My senses stun
Hiding my anxiety.

Why are we here
Far away from everybody
In the immense solitude?
Mute and dry I became.
A drowned tier in my voice.

Nuestro secreto (Our Secret)

I wake up delirious in the middle of the night.
Not even a sip of water will extinguish this fire.
My body in flames in the middle of the night.

I smash well the pillow rolling over
and take a deep breath.
It seems that I am close, I go blind,
And trip over an abysm.

I will listen to you,
I will listen to you in dreams.
Your voice will tell,
You voice will tell our secret.

My temples sweat; my pulse accelerates.
I wait crouched with my eyes open.
I want to hold you; I want to decipher you.

The capture is impossible,
your sound glides through my ears.
Perhaps, with the sleep I could get,
I could find you in the morning.

I will listen to you….