ABOUT LEONARDO SUAREZ-PAZ

Leonardo Suarez-Paz is a Latin GRAMMY Award nominated artist, a violin soloist, vocalist, composer and tango dancer and choreographer who creates groundbreaking music, dance & multidisciplinary tango projects by combining his unparalleled Argentine tango heritage with a vast experience across tango, jazz and classical genres. Deeply rooted in the tango tradition Leonardo’s work “personifies and embodies the authentic spirit of Tango” (LARAS, Latin Grammy Awards Live) but is considered to represent a contemporary nuevo tango style. While hailing him as the “torchbearer of Argentine Tango and the legacy of its greatest composer Astor Piazzolla” (All About Jazz), critics have described Leonardo’s compositions and arrangements as “harmonically sophisticated,”  “an unlikely yet happy marriage of Prokofiev and tango nuevo.” (GRAMOPHONE, UK) 

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Leonardo Suarez-Paz was mentored by the revolutionary composer Astor Piazzolla and performed as a violin soloist with the foremost directors of tango’s Golden Age including Mariano Mores, Horacio Salgán, Atilio Stampone and Osvaldo Berlingieri and as a tango dancer in The Mariano Mores Show, Tangox2 and Perfumes de Tango. Leonardo carries a 100-year family legacy in the genre, from the Afro-Argentine poet & 'payador' Gabino Ezeiza to his parents, tango singer Beatriz Suarez-Paz and Fernando “El Negro” Suarez-Paz, a classical and tango violinist who was instrumental in creating the nuevo tango sound as a member of Piazzolla’s Quinteto Nuevo Tango.

Born in 1971 in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Leonardo’s affinity for the arts developed naturally. He grew up surrounded by the arts, particularly by tango and classical music, his father, Fernando Suarez-Pazwas a member of the Buenos Aires Philharmonicand both of his parents performed with tango ensembles and orchestras. In 1977, after the onset of Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-1983), Leonardo’s family relocated to ‘Olivos’ a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, to a house which became a gathering place for musicians, poets, dancers and others where they could improvise, create freely and express their ideas. These guests included Astor Piazzolla, Enrique Mario Francini, Raul Garelo, Ruben Juarez, Osvaldo Piro, Susana Rinaldi, the great poet Horacio Ferrer, Saul Cosentino, Nestor Marconi, Osvaldo Berlingieri, Osvaldo Requena, Leonardo’s parents, Beatriz and Fernando Suarez Paz and his grandparents, Roberto Picolo and Maria Celia Rodriguez, who were also tango artists. The guests would dance, play and eat ‘asado’ until the early hours of the morning in a quiet, green neighborhood that once used to be an olive orchard. 

During his formative years, Leonardo studied vocal technique and opera with Sergio Tulián, violin with Miguel Angel Bertero and holds an advanced music degree from the Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel de Falla in Buenos Aires, Argentina,. In addition to the multi-year mentorship with Astor Piazzolla, Leonardo completed Advanced Music Composition and theory courses at Sociedad Argentina De Autores y Compositores de Música, in Buenos Aires, taught by Juan Alberto Cirigliano, José Bragato, Guillermo Iscla and Nestor Marconi. He studied jazz with Hugo Pierre, and Patience Higgins.

Leonardo made his debut as a singer at the age of 6, singing and doing voice over on commercial recordings with producers Pablo Ziegler, Rubén López Fürst, Pocho Lapouble, Lucho Gonzales and Eduardo Schejtman. At age 14, Leonardo debuted as a violinist with Argentine folklore artists Teresa Parodi and Jaime Torresand as a tango violinist with the Roberto Gallardo Tango Orchestra. At age 16, became a violinist and the youngest member of the Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón Opera House in Buenos Aires. In addition to his vocal, violin and composition studies, Leonardo studied tango dance and choreography with Juan Carlos Copesand Miguel Angel Zotto, making his debut as a tango dancer with The Mariano Mores Showin Japan in 1989.

Leonardo Suarez-Paz takes a unique multidisciplinary approach to tango as the artistic director of Nuevo Tango Arts, a performing arts company which he co-directs with his dance partner and spouse, Olga Suarez-Paz. Nuevo Tango Arts was created with the artistic mission to preserve the legacy and advance the evolution of tango across all disciplines through live performance and a sociocultural mission to unite people through the art and culture of tango.

Nuevo Tango Arts is built on Leonardo’s award-winning productions and educational programs with which toured over the past 20 years, including: Latin Grammy nominated Cuartetango string quartet, Cuartetango Music & Dance Co., PIAZZOLLA100:El Nuevo Tango, Masters of Nuevo Tango, Romance de Tango, Nuevo Tango Ensemble, Nuevo Tango Ballet, Her TANGO and PIAZZOLLA100: The New York Tango Festival, a project which was launched in 2018 and has been transformed into an annual festival featuring concerts, exhibits, milongas with live music and cinema along with a robust tango music and tango dance education program.

Today, Nuevo Tango Arts is redefining tango for the 21stcentury, while uniting people globally through its art and culture. In the words of Wynton Marsalis, Leonardo Suarez-Paz is a “virtuoso extraordinaire”who “shows us how easily we can communicate across cultures if the desire and effort are there.” 

The productions of Leonardo and Olga Suarez-Paz have been awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Argentina, New York State Council on the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dance/NYC  and presented at the Teatro Colon Opera House, Centro Cultural Kirchner, Teatro Alvear and the Buenos Aires Tango Festival in Argentina, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, National Museum of Dance, on PBS and live at the 13th Latin Grammy Awards Ceremony, following a double nomination with his group Cuartetango string quartet for “Masters of Bandoneon” in 2012 as Best Tango Album and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. 

Leonardo is the Official Representative of Academia Nacional del Tango of Buenos Aires in New York, appointed by a unanimous vote of the Academicians under President Horacio Ferrer and has taught for Lincoln Center Institute (now Lincoln Center Education), The Juilliard School’s Evening Division (now Julliard Extension) and studio music lessons at Columbia University.   Leonardo & Olga Suarez-Paz were the Dean’s Artist-In-Residence at NYU Steinhardt 2022-2023 among other residencies, lectures and master classes. 

 A 4th generation Tango artist, Leonardo Suarez-Paz has been billed by the press as "Tango Royalty" (All About Jazz, UK/ Erie-Times News). Leonardo toured internationally for more than 11 years, performing as a violin soloist with Tango’s most legendary figures including Mariano Mores (creator of the tango “Uno”), Horacio Salgan, Atilio Stampone, Osvaldo Berlingieri, Nestor Marconi, Jose Collangelo, Horacio Ferrer, Leopoldo Federico, Federico Scorticati, Tania, Osvaldo Requena, Saul Cosentino and many others. He was featured as a dancer and violin soloist in the iconic shows of Tangox2, Perfumes de Tango and The Mariano Mores Show.  Leonardo was the only violin soloist to be featured on Broadway in both tango productions - Tango Argentino and Forever Tango. 

As a classical violinist with expertise in tango, Leonardo toured as the violin soloist for Julio Boca’s Ballet Argentino (1995-1998), was the concertmaster and soloist for Savion Glover’s Classical Savion (2006-2016) with whom he also developed and performed a Savion Glover & Leonardo Suarez-Paz Tap and Tango project, accompanied by Cuartetango string quartet. Leonardo’s violin soloist credits include New York City Opera’s production of Maria De Buenos Aires, Greenwich Symphony Orchestra performance of his composition “Nuevos Aires, violin concerto.”  Leonardo is featured as soloist on recordings including the GRAMMY-Award winning album “100 Años de Mariachi” with Placido Domingo, the Grammy-winning and Latin Grammy-winning album  “Tangos” with Carlos Franzetti and Rubén Blades and the Latin Grammy-winning album “Amarte Es Un Placer” with Luis Miguel. 

As a jazz and tango-jazz crossover player Leonardo appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Spoleto and Umbria Jazz Festivals in Italy and appeared regularly at The Blue Note, The Knitting Factory, Justin's, Sweet Basil and the Monday night sessions at St. Nick's Pub in Harlem. He has collaborated with Jim Hall, making a special appearance with Cuartetango string quartet and Jim Hall Trio in Birdland. Leonardo performed regularly with Stanley Jordan, Cody Moffet's jazz ensemble Jambalaya, Steve Kuhn, Patience Higginsand the Sugar Hill Jazz Quartet and his own Leonardo Suarez Paz Jazz Quintet. 

Leonardo composes for his multiple projects while providing tango expertise, arrangements and compositions for soloists, chamber groups and orchestras including Augustine Hadelich (“Histoire du Tango”), Neave Trio (Celebrating Piazzolla) and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.