Piazzolla Writes Adiós Nonino

In October 1959, the Argentine bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla was staying in New York City amidst severe professional and personal strain. He had been conducting an arduous tour of Central America and the Caribbean alongside the dancers Juan Carlos Copes and Maria Nieves Rego, an endeavor that faced financial instability and ended without commercial success. Compounding his financial struggles and a deep sense of dislocation far from his homeland, word reached him while he was performing in Puerto Rico that his father, Vicente Piazzolla, had died following a bicycle accident in his native city of Mar del Plata.

The elder Piazzolla had long been known within the family by the affectionate moniker Nonino, derived from the Italian diminutive for grandfather, nonnino. Overwhelmed by grief, homesickness, and depression after returning to New York, Astor Piazzolla isolated himself to confront the loss through composition. Drawing upon the bandoneon, the core instrument of his musical life, he fashioned an elegiac piece titled Adios Nonino, meaning Farewell, Granddaddy, completed in approximately thirty minutes as a direct tribute to his father.