studentwise: LET’S TANGO!

QUINCY PONVERT ’23’S senior recital marked the capstone of their highly memorable stretch of music as a student. It included arrangements of tango standards and modern pieces played by Swarthmore’s first student tango group, Sexteto Strapatta, as well as arrangements for solo bandoneón, original compositions, and taiko pieces with members of the Swarthmore Taiko Ensemble.

The recital followed a workshop and concert in March in which Sexteto Strapatta, which Ponvert founded, collaborated with the professional ensemble Abaddón.

The experience began with sectional rehearsals with the professional ensemble providing notes and critiques to the students before the open workshop. Sexteto Strapatta and Abaddón then played together for final changes before the concert.

Ponvert led the concert and played bandoneón. Other student musicians included Daniel Song ’25 and Emma Gabriel ’25 on violin, Isshin Yunoki ’25 on piano, and Henry Cassel ’23 on bass. Both Sexteto Strappata and Abaddón featured Shinjoo Cho, who is Ponvert’s coach and who coordinated the workshop and concert.

Ponvert received funding from the College to study ethnomusicology in Argentina in the summer of 2020. But when COVID-19 hit, they instead used the funding to purchase a bandoneón and take lessons over Zoom with an instructor from Argentina.

“It was a very slow and grueling process,” says Ponvert, an Honors music major with an Honors minor in education and a course minor in Latin American studies from New Haven, Conn. “I started really studying with Shinjoo when I was back in school, in 2021 and 2022.”

Ponvert decided to form a tango quintet at Swarthmore. Cho became their coach and got in touch with Jenny Honig, director of concert programming, production, and publicity for the Department of Music and Dance and co-coordinator of the Fetter Chamber Music Program.

Andrew Hauze ’04, senior lecturer and co-coordinator of the Fetter Chamber Music Program, the rest of the faculty, and Honig “have been really, really supportive in inviting musicians to play here and doing tango programming,” says Ponvert, “which is something that, as far as I know, has never happened here.”

“Quincy is adventurous and joyous,” says Cho, who, above all, relished the chance “to see the culmination of all of Quincy’s musical interests that span a few centuries, including their original works.”