The London Tango Quintet are playing at Hackney’s Round Chapel on May 25

Ten years of tango are being celebrated at the Round Chapel in Hackney at the end of the month.

David Juritz, Craig Ogden, Miloš Milivojevic, David Gordon and Richard Pryce have been playing together for a decade as London Tango Quintet.

“Craig, Miloš and I have known each other for years,” says violinist Juritz. “Their diaries are pretty hectic but, a few times a year, we get together to play tango. It’s fantastic fun, even wild at times, but that’s not to say it isn’t challenging as well.

“To do it justice you have to approach it just as you would any other great music - with a sense of style and your total commitment, but also leaving enough freedom to experiment. When it happens, you feel like you’ve been set free. It’s just exhilarating.”

Playing to a cabaret audience at Hackney’s Round Chapel on Lower Clapton Road on May 25, the quintet is made up of accordion (Milivojevic), guitar (Ogden), piano (Gordon) and bass (Pryce) on top of Juritz’s violin. All five musicians are critically acclaimed in their own right, and have performed across the globe in some of the world’s most famous venues.

But it’s their passion for tango that led director Juritz to bring them together – two of them have even gone the whole hog and taken up tango dancing, a pastime that seems to ne gaining increasing popularity.

“Tango does have a growing following in London. The people we’ve met are quite fanatical about it – and we have really enjoyed their response to our concerts.”

Juritz himself fell in love with tango in the early 90s with “a new girlfriend putting on the first track of Astor Piazzolla’s Zero Hour.

“It was mind-blowing; a kind of kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions played with extraordinary sophistication, virtuosity and, most of all, a raw energy that I’ve never heard surpassed in any other kind of music. That was the moment tango became an obsession for me.

”25 and a bit years on, I’ve brought together my own tango band and that girlfriend is now my wife. Tango

doesn’t always have a sad ending!”

Tickets for The London Tango Quintet can be bought from ltq-in-concert.eventbrite.com.