The Solo Bandoneonist’s Dodecalogue

12 Lessons on Nerves, Preparation, and Emotion for Solo Bandoneón Performers

On June 27th I played a concert that didn’t go the way I’d hoped, and I won’t get into the details, because that’s not the point. The point is that when I got home, instead of filing the evening away as a bad memory, I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down everything that was going through my head: twelve points, plus one, a dodecalogue, if we want to call it that, born out of an experience I’d have to call “negative.”

I sat with it for a while before deciding to share it, and then it clicked: that was exactly the point. A negative experience is still an experience, and maybe the most useful kind you can have. I won’t pretend the concert went well, because it didn’t, and I’m saying that openly because I think telling only the results and never the process is only doing half the job.

And the process, in this case, is the one every solo bandoneón player walks.

A Mountain, Climbed Alone

Choosing to bring the bandoneón on stage by yourself, even just once in a while, is a different thing from playing it in an orchestra or a quartet, where the weight is shared with others. It’s a bit like choosing to climb a demanding mountain on your own, with no rope partner to lean on when your breath runs out. It’s not about skill or merit, it’s that playing solo exposes you in a way nothing else does: there’s no one to share a mistake with, no one to cover a gap, no one to absorb a shaky moment. It’s just the instrument, the music, and you.

That’s why, when something goes wrong during a solo concert, it hits differently, and for the same reason, reflecting on what didn’t work carries a different weight too. I wrote all of this down not to complain about a rough night, but to hold on to what that night taught me, before the emotion of the moment faded and took the lesson with it.

The Dodecalogue, Point by Point

1) Don’t Underestimate Any Piece

Go back over every piece on the program, no exceptions, including the ones you think you know well, including the ones you’ve played dozens of times. The confidence you build in the days before, often because a piece has “always gone fine,” is exactly the trap: it’s that piece, the one you stop reviewing because it feels safe, that trips you up on stage. No piece should be taken for granted, or neglected, until the very end.

2) Show Up Rested, Not Wrecked

Resting well before a concert matters as much as the technical preparation, so whenever possible, it’s worth taking the day off before you play, or better yet, two days off. For those of us who, like me, work and don’t live off the bandoneón alone, showing up to a concert after 6, 7, 8 hours of work is genuinely hard, because body and mind arrive already spent before you’ve even opened the bellows. Rest time before playing isn’t a luxury, it’s as much a part of the preparation as practice itself.

3) If You Make a Mistake, Cover It and Keep Going

The audience rarely knows what they were supposed to hear, so what actually gets noticed isn’t the mistake itself but the reaction to it: stopping, correcting yourself, showing the discomfort. Let the mistake go, don’t chase after it.

4) Progressive Relaxation, Also Against Hand Tremor

Right before a concert I find Jacobson’s progressive relaxation technique very useful, because playing tense gets in the way of a good performance. This kind of relaxation also helps prevent hand tremor, which gets worse under tension and is one of the hardest things to manage when you’re playing alone, with no one to cover for a shaky moment.

5) Breathing, With the Right Amount of Lead Time

Breathing exercises help keep anxiety in check and improve focus, and among these I also find circular breathing exercises useful, now available as apps on phones and built into several smartwatches. The right time to do them is at least an hour before performing, and in any case no less than half an hour: the exact length is subjective, since some people need only a few minutes while others need a full hour. As a good compromise for anyone, 20 to 24 minutes of focused breathing is a solid starting point.

6) Keep Going, Like Rocky

Anyone who’s seen the films remembers: Rocky took brutal, humiliating losses, and still got back up every time. Feeling low after a bad night is normal, but that’s exactly the moment to step in with a clear head and weigh things rationally, because we tend to be much harder on ourselves than the situation deserves, when it usually wasn’t as bad as it felt. Once you’ve moved past the discouragement that makes you think the worst, like giving up on music altogether, that’s the moment to get up, roll up your sleeves, and get back to work, fixing what didn’t work.

7) An Emotional Dimension, for Any Kind of Music

Finding an emotional dimension in the music is essential, and it’s not just about tango: it applies to baroque repertoire, to a Bach prelude as much as to a Piazzolla tango, to whatever piece you’re bringing on stage. A performance that’s technically clean but empty leaves nothing behind, while what stays with people, for better or worse, is always the emotion that came through, and that has to be found piece by piece, not assumed just because of the genre.

8) Introduce the Pieces, Don’t Just Play Them

Building an introduction to each piece deserves real thought, not something improvised on the spot, because it has a genuine educational function. Whoever’s listening to a solo bandoneón is often hearing it for the first time, so explaining what they’re about to hear is as much a part of the job as playing it well, not just a nice extra.

9) Who Am I Doing This For?

For myself, for others, for the music? It’s a question that maybe doesn’t have a final answer, but it’s worth asking before every concert, not only after a bad one. I often think of something Yo-Yo Ma said about the fear of making mistakes in public: “It’s not about proving anything. It’s about sharing something.” And also: “If you are only worried about not making a mistake then you will communicate nothing.” Shifting the focus from not making mistakes to sharing something beautiful changes, I think, the way you stand on stage.

10) You Need an Osmel Souza

Osmel Souza is known for having coached generations of beauty pageant contestants, working on stage presence and bearing, and the reference is meant to be a little provocative. The musical preparation, the content, is usually already there: what actually needs work is the form, the presence, how you carry yourself on stage, not just what you play.

11) Find Yourself a Nemesis

Finding another bandoneón player to build a healthy rivalry with helps keep the drive to improve alive, and it’s even better if you know them personally, because direct competition with someone you actually measure yourself against is the most effective kind. Otherwise, you can pick one among the many who post their own videos online, following their work closely, not to imitate them, but to have a real benchmark to measure yourself against.

12) Always Give Yourself a Reward

After a concert, always give yourself something, even if it didn’t go the way you hoped, maybe especially then. The quiet burnout of never allowing yourself a break is a real risk for anyone taking on this path alone.

+1) Really Know Your Instrument

For too long I neglected the pure knowledge of the instrument, beyond whatever repertoire I happened to be preparing, things like the study of cadences, chord sequences, harmonic structures. There are so many: from the classic dominant-tonic, to the more elaborate 2-5-1, to a sequence of dominant seventh chords moving in fifths. It’s work that doesn’t show directly in a concert, but that everything else rests on. Before any technique, before any mental strategy, this is what remains.

Closing Thoughts

What’s left of that night on June 27th is this piece of paper, written in one sitting, and the twelve, thirteen, things I learned from reading it back once I’d calmed down. I won’t use all of them the same way, and a year from now I’ll probably add a few more, or correct some of these, but for now they’re written down, and the next time I step on stage alone with the bandoneón, they’ll be there with me.