Editing Astor Piazzolla (section)

===Early career===
In 1936, he returned with his family to Mar del Plata, where he began to play in a variety of tango orchestras and around this time he discovered the music of [[Elvino Vardaro]]’s sextet on the radio. Vardaro's novel interpretation of tango made a great impression on Piazzolla and years later he would become Piazzolla's violinist in his [[Orquesta de Cuerdas]] (String Orchestra) and his [[First Quintet]].

Inspired by Vardaro's style of tango, and still only 17 years old, Piazzolla moved to Buenos Aires in 1938 where, the following year, he realized a dream when he joined the orchestra of the bandoneonist [[Aníbal Troilo]], which would become one of the greatest tango orchestras of that time. Piazzolla was employed as a temporary replacement for {{ill|Toto Rodríguez|es}} who was ill, but when Rodríguez returned to work Troilo decided to retain Piazzolla as a fourth bandoneonist. Apart from playing the bandoneon, Piazzolla also became Troilo's arranger and would occasionally play the piano for him. By 1941 he was earning a good wage, enough to pay for music lessons with [[Alberto Ginastera]], an eminent Argentine composer of classical music. The pianist [[Arthur Rubinstein]], then living in [[Buenos Aires]], had advised him to study with Ginastera; delving into scores by [[Stravinsky]], [[Bartók]], [[Ravel]] and others, Piazzolla rose early each morning to hear the [[Teatro Colón]] orchestra rehearse while continuing a gruelling performing schedule in the tango clubs at night. During his five years of study with Ginastera he mastered orchestration, which he later considered to be one of his strong points. In 1943 he started piano lessons with the Argentine classical pianist Raúl Spivak, which would continue for the next five years, and wrote his first classical works ''Preludio No. 1 for Violin and Piano'' and ''Suite for Strings and Harps''. In the same year he married his first wife, Dedé Wolff, an artist, with whom he had two children, Diana and Daniel.

As time passed, Troilo began to fear that the advanced musical ideas of the young bandoneonist might undermine the style of his orchestra and make it less appealing to dancers of tango. Tensions mounted between the two bandoneonists until, in 1944, Piazzolla announced his intention to leave Troilo and join the orchestra of the tango singer and bandoneonist {{ill|Francisco Fiorentino|es}}. Piazzolla would lead Fiorentino's orchestra until 1946 and make many recordings with him, including his first two instrumental tangos, ''La chiflada'' and ''Color de rosa''.

In 1946 Piazzolla formed his [[Piazzolla's Orquesta Típica|Orquesta Típica]], which, although having a similar formation to other tango orchestras of the day, gave him his first opportunity to experiment with his own approach to the orchestration and musical content of tango. That same year he composed ''El Desbande'', which he considered to be his first formal tango, and then began to compose musical scores for films, starting with ''Con los mismos colores'' in 1949 and ''[[Bólidos de acero]]'' in 1950, both films directed by [[Carlos Torres Ríos]].

Having disbanded his first orchestra in 1950, he almost abandoned tango altogether, continuing to study Bartok and Stravinsky and orchestra direction with [[Hermann Scherchen]]. He spent a lot of time listening to jazz and searching for a musical style of his own beyond the realms of tango. He decided to drop the bandoneon and to dedicate himself to writing and to studying music. Between 1950 and 1954 he composed a series of works that began to develop his unique style: ''Para lucirse'', ''Tanguango'', ''Prepárense'', ''Contrabajeando'', ''Triunfal'' and ''Lo que vendrá''.