Palaver String’s
Port City
MUSIC AT TINDER HEARTH
Thursday, November 6th
DOORS at 5:00
MUSIC at 6:30
Doors open at 5PM with snacks and drinks available for purchase.
Music starts at 6:30PM.
Tickets are $25, Children 13 and under free admission.
Music will be indoors with seating.
Please contact us at tinderhearth@gmail.com with any questions.
———
Tinder Hearth is so very excited to be a stop in Palaver String's Port City tour. The show explores tango music throughout the genre’s history, and features bandoneon visionary Heyni Solera as soloist and composer. Palaver will perform danceable classics alongside contemporary tango-inspired compositions.
This performance will celebrate tango’s ongoing evolution and the powerful interplay between music and dance, as well as how the genre is being reclaimed by marginalized identities, especially women and queer artists.
Palaver Strings is a Grammy-nominated, musician-led string ensemble and nonprofit organization based in Portland, ME. Their mission is to strengthen and inspire community through music. In their musician-led model, Palaver’s musicians share artistic and administrative leadership, guided by a passion for engaging new audiences, addressing social justice issues, and amplifying underrepresented voices.
In a recent interview with The Berkshire Edge, Teagan Faran, co-artistic director of Palaver Strings, spoke about the Port City project:
What drew Palaver to tango as the focus of this program, and why is it called ‘Port City’?
The idea of a port city—as a place of exchange and refuge—is part of what inspired the title. It’s something we reflect on often, being based in Portland, Maine, which is the U.S. state geographically closest to the African continent. Maine has a large refugee population, and we strive to be a welcoming and hospitable community. Buenos Aires, Argentina, is also a historic port city, shaped by waves of immigration and cultural exchange—the very forces that gave rise to tango music. For us, that connection felt natural. One thing we aim to do is carry that spirit of a port city wherever we go. Even if we’re performing somewhere landlocked, the concert stage can still become a place of connection—a kind of port—where people are welcomed and ideas can be exchanged.
I myself have been playing tango since I was about 12, and so it’s a music that’s very near and dear to me, and it’s really special I think, because it was in large part created by a number of violinists and other string players. So, it’s a musical language that feels really good on the instrument.
Can you tell us about working with Heyni Solera and what makes her artistry unique?
Yes. Heyni and I met in Buenos Aires in 2019, and we’ve been more or less musically inseparable since then. She is a powerhouse. She’s one of the few female bandoneon players in the world. It’s an instrument that, much like the genre of tango, has been largely gendered. It’s a very physical instrument, and just the idea of having to open your legs on stage is something that is often talked about with unfortunate undertones. And so, Heyni is a real champion of the instrument—of making the pedagogy of it more accessible for smaller hands, for instance, and finding ways to make playing the instrument possible for people with smaller frames. But she’s also one of the new age of composer performers, and so we’re playing two of her pieces on the program, which she is specifically writing for her style of bandoneon playing, which is really great.
Read the rest of the interview here:
