TANGO and beyond: Max Baillie on running a concert series in St Leonards-on-Sea

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When Grammy-nominated Argentinian bandoneon player and composer JP Jofre sent me a message on Instagram saying ‘Yo Max! I’m coming to London next July, can we fix up a concert together?’ there was only really one reply: ’YES!!!’ (along with some thumbs-up emojis). We’d met at Guy Johnston’s Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival last year and had a lot of fun sharing the stage playing JP’s music, but as he normally zips between Seoul and New York I wasn’t sure when we might meet again. His visit to the UK was the perfect opportunity to bring JP to St Leonards-on-Sea, the beautiful seaside town (near Hastings in East Sussex) which I made my home in 2020, and where I’ve been holding regular concerts since the UK emerged from lockdown.

Back then I was handed the enormous key to an abandoned church with an open brief. This was no ordinary space: one of only a few churches built by Pugin (the illustrious architect of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster), it had a stunning stone mural behind the stage and I’m not exaggerating when I say it had an acoustic like the Wigmore Hall: crystalline and yet warm and generous. Most unusual was the strange and magical atmosphere of a grand space that had been neglected for a long time.

After a summer clean and tidy we were ready for the first concert! The stunning space and my first amazing guest set the tone for the series: I was joined by my friend cellist Laura van der Heijden to play a programme centred around Kodály’s Duo for violin and cello, a rhapsodic piece full of fantasy and Hungarian folk melodies, and one of my all-time favourites. It was the first live music that most of the roughly 70 assembled audience had heard since the pandemic began, and it was amazing to see the human bonds of my new home all gathered in the same space. Not many of the audience had heard the Kodály before and so I found myself telling stories of Kodály and Bartók, lifelong pals, with their phonograph going deep into Transylvania to find folk songs that inspired their compositions, and picking the odd bit out of the music for the audience to listen out for along the way.

Spoken introductions have been a feature of all my concerts, as well as seating being arranged differently at each event, most often in some crescent formation so as to feel inclusive and welcoming. I’ve since moved my concerts to other venues (the Pugin church is sadly suffering its neglect and the effects of the sea winds). Luckily there are some amazing spaces in St Leonards. It’s a lot of fun dreaming up interesting programmes, sometimes with old favourites but also exploring new repertoire, and it feels like the audiences are really up for anything: from Schoenberg to Haydn, from Hildegard von Bingen to Hungarian cimbalom. 

The greatest joy of is bringing incredible guest musicians down to collaborate, artists who may a few days later be playing a concerto in the Royal Festival Hall or jetting over the Atlantic to play at Carnegie Hall. The concerts have featured my musical friends and as such have reflected the diversity of my playing life. As well as a whole roster of wonderful classical musicians I’ve had Nordic folk musicians Olav Mjelva and Erik Rydvall, jazz musicians Ewan Bleach and Misha Mullov-Abbado, West African kora player Suntou Susso, folk singer Alice Zawadzki, and many others take part. In September, I’ll collaborate with saxophone trio JATAJ for a programme centred around Bach’s B minor Partita for solo violin. The concert is called ‘To the Castle of Heaven’ – a reference to one of the churches where Bach worked and where the music in the upper gallery appeared to be descending from the heavens. The concert will take the listener on a journey from the original Partita to contemporary versions and reflections upon it. Following our Barbican concert on 1 October, my group Lodestar Trio will launch its collaboration with string ensemble, a folk odyssey of Bartók, Nordic folk tunes, Dvořák, and Greig. 

Sometimes if I’m playing a concert elsewhere I’ll suggest to colleagues simply to repeat the programme in St Leonards. I also curate programmes as one-offs, such as this month’s Tango concert. I’ll be joined not only by JP Jofre but also the German pianist Viviana-Zarah Baudis and double bass player Marianne Schofield - an all-star cast! The centrepiece is JP Jofre’s Concerto no.1 for bandoneon and violin alongside Piazzolla and and other music on a Latin theme: Saint-Saëns Havannaise, and some surprises. I always like to hold back some of the programme until the night itself, a bit like a jazz concert setlist where you wouldn’t expect to know the whole programme in advance. 

JP’s instrument, the Argentinian bandoneon, is a relative of the accordion and famously complex in its construction – the first time JP bought one he took it back to the shop thinking it was broken! It has no keyboard, (only buttons), and in order to play a simple scale the fingers must play highly irregular patterns, and the sequence of notes changes completely with each direction of the bellows. Some passages in his violin parts are unusual and unidiomatic for the fiddle, no doubt born of their link to the bandoneon, and so I feel I’m connecting with it physically through his music. Along with angular and rhythmic passages of this modern school of ‘Nuevo Tango’, it is of course also deeply lyrical and passionate like older Tango music, and this makes it a joy to play as a string player. 

This concert will be my 18^th in the series, and I’m planning another mini-festival for early 2025. I want the concerts in St Leonards to be a seed-bed for new programmes and exciting collaborations, and to give audiences up-front, intimate experiences with chamber music, classical and beyond.

TANGO! will be held at 7:30pm on 18 July at Christchurch, Silchester Road, St Leonards on Sea TN37 6GL (a short walk from St Leonards Warrior Square station. Find out more at www.STLCONCERTS.co.uk

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