Ronroco Tour
During my interview last May, I asked Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla what we could expect from his concert in Amsterdam in October. He responded with “Very different from everything that I’ve done before. This concert is about the ronroco and about that world.” During that concert, he would celebrate the 25th anniversary of his album Ronroco, which features his iconic instrument with the same name. He also said during the interview that I should attend. So, I found myself in the gorgeous venue Het Concertgebouw on October 27, to fully immerse myself in the wondrous world of his small 10-string instrument.
Many people who give concerts in Het Concertgebouw love to enter the stage by using the doors in the back and walk down the famous red stairs, while also being greeted with applause from the audience. Unfortunately Santaolalla lost the ability to walk by himself, and a wonderful solution has been found to solve this challenge. The stage was almost dark and we could listen to rain drops, on which the musicians slowly walked as a human train onto the stage from the side, with Santaolalla in the middle being gracefully transported to his seat in the middle. After sitting down, his fellow musicians stood back and Santaolalla started to play on singing bowls by himself. Halfway the piece the rest also sat down and joined in. These musicians were from his inner circle he has been collaborating with for quite a while. They were Nicolás Rainone, who played cello and acoustic bass guitar, Javier Casalla on violin, Barbarita Palacios, who sat on the floor of her little stage playing all kinds of percussion instruments, keys and guitars, and lastly Juan Luqui on additional guitar, roncoco and charango.
Over the next 90 minutes, I immersed myself in the performance of the musicians on stage. The setlist featured mainly music from Santaolalla’s Ronroco and Camino albums, but I could also appreciate his soundtracks from Babel, Brokeback Mountain, and, of course, his music from The Last of Us. Santaolalla’s musicians switched instruments from time to time, but Santaolalla almost performed everything that night on his ronroco. When he was not, he surprised the audience by doing something else. He would go into a meditative state and blow on a large pipe or even do some throat singing.
In addition to the astounding music I heard that night, I also loved the interaction of the musicians with each other and with us in the audience. You could see the musicians smiling and communicating with each other nonverbally, and it was clear that they genuinely enjoyed themselves immensely. Santaolalla addressed the audience from time to time, and he even sang Happy Birthday with us to celebrate Amsterdam’s 750th birthday.
This concert showed us how great film music can be. I acknowledge that this is a somewhat unusual statement, since most of the music played that night was not explicitly written for film. As Santaolalla mentioned in my interview and during the concert, the roncoco opened the world to cinema for him. He also mentioned in the interview that he draws inspiration from a story, rather than a specific medium, so, in a sense, everything we heard that night could have been from a movie. Another statement from the interview is that Santaolalla does not feel that the music he writes for the ronroco necessarily sounds like music from the Andes Mountains. He is probably right as an Argentinian, but I pictured myself in those mountains throughout the whole concert, and I loved every minute of it.
Concert information
Where: Het Concertgebouw – Amsterdam, the Netherlands
When: October 27, 2025
Musicians: Gustavo Santaolalla, Barbarita Palacios, Nicolás Rainone, Javier Casalla and Juan Luqui
Setlist
- Way Up – Ronroco
- Gaucho – Ronroco
- Jardin – Ronroco
- Nature sounds
- Desando el Camino – Qhapaq Ñan
- Coyita – Ronroco
- Del Pago – Ronroco
- Canto en la Rama
- Throat singing
- Cordón de Plata – Camino
- Ella – Camino
- Alma – Camino
- Iguazú – Ronroco
- Endless Flight – Babel
- Pipe sounds
- De Ushuaia a La Quiaca – Qhapaq Ñan
- Happy Birthday for Amsterdam
- It Can’t Last – The Last of Us Part 2
- Unbroken – The Last of Us Part 2
- All Gone (No Escape) – The Last of Us
- The Last of Us – The Last of Us
- Zenda – Ronroco (encore)
- Lela – Ronroco (encore)
- La Vuelta – Ronroco (encore)
- Suite – Brokeback Mountain (encore)
