Cuarteto Tanguero’s pianist, Daniel Inamorato, first listened to tango at a young age, when his father would play tango records on Sunday afternoons. Once in Bloomington, colleague and friend Daniel Stein introduced Inamorato to a wider range of tango styles, and historical recordings. As he started playing with Daniel and Ben, the quartet’s bandoneonist, he began to develop a new appreciation for the genre, and continues to learn and explore the nuances in performing all the different tango styles and songs.

He finds most appealing the relationship between the music and its dance, as a living practice: “I always heard about the relationship between music and dance while playing baroque music. This has always been a really abstract experience since we don’t dance these dances anymore, at least not regularly. So the tango is bringing me the reality (a less abstract one) about how to relate movement to tempo and gestures to sound.”

Inamorato first encountered the piano at the age of five, when he started learning from his sister Viviane Louro, who learned to play the piano after doctors suggested to their mother that piano lessons would help her deal with her physical disability. Inamorato took very naturally to the instrument, performing his first concert as a soloist with orchestra by age nine. His teachers in Brazil include pianists Luciana Sayuri, Marisa Lacorte, and Eduardo Monteiro, at the Fundação das Artes of São Caetano do Sul and the University of São Paulo.

He moved to Bloomington, Indiana, to pursue a graduate degree as a Barbara and David Jacobs Fellow under the tutelage of Arnaldo Cohen and Jean-Louis Haguenauer at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has taught in his home country in conservatories and music festivals, and has received more than twenty prizes in music competitions in his native Brazil. He also developed a special music program for people with disabilities at Estação Especial da Lapa, in São Paulo. In addition to a career as a soloist and chamber musician, Inamorato has also worked as a studio musician and performed in the Brazilian adaptations of the musicals The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon. In addition, Inamorato has a passion for films, especially by directors Tarkovsky, Bunuel, Fellini, Almodovar, Tarantino, and Lars-von Trier.