A native of Rosario, Argentina, Maestro Bušlje studied piano, conducting, violoncello, and tuba at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Buenos Aires.  Before founding PASO in 1991, he was Assistant Conductor of the American University Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the American University Camerata in Washington, DC.    Maestro Bušlje has been a frequently featured guest conductor in Argentina.  In 2001, he was a guest conductor of the Sochi Symphony Orchestra in Russia.  From 1999-2002 he was the principal guest conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Honduras. He has been a frequent guest conductor of the Guayaquil Symphony Orchestra in Ecuador.  In 2009, he participated in a South American music festival in Lima, Peru and received critical acclaim for his orchestra’s musicianship and unique programming.  In 2011, he returned to Lima to play a command performance for President Alan Garcia.  Maestro Buslje directed PASO for the 2013 Latino Presidential Inaugural Celebration at the Kennedy Center.  In 2018, he was invited to perform with PASO at the International Festival of Tango in Medellin, Colombia.  He has been the creative force behind the Pan American Symphony Orchestra. With his “sure command of the music’s expressive scope” and his sensitive balancing of orchestral commentary, he has “quietly created a valuable Washington institution” (Washington Post). 

Holly Nelson, PASO’s new concertmaster, received her bachelor's degree in music from the Mannes College of Music in New York City and her master's degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Ohio, where she was the teaching assistant to Giora Schmidt. She has taught at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Fordham University in New York City, and the University of Texas - El Paso. She is currently completing her Doctor in Musical Arts degree at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University where she studies with violinist Vadim Gluzman as a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow. 

Ms. Nelson was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Argentina that allowed her to fully immerse herself in studying tango music in Buenos Aires for nine months in 2023. Her notable concerts in Argentina include a solo tango violin performance at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, performances at Teatro el Fino with the Ariel Pirotti Quartet, a milonga at the historic tango club Salón Marabú with the ensemble Sentimental y Cayengue, and frequent appearances in one of the most popular and longest-running tango shows in Buenos Aires, El Querandí.  She also studied and performed at the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School’s Piazzolla Festival, Reed College’s Tango for Musicians Festival in Portland, Oregon, and the Stowe Tango Academy in Vermont.

Holly also performs classical and avant-garde music. She was recently awarded the Peabody Institute of Music's Presser Graduate Music Award, the conservatory's most prestigious award “designed to encourage and support the advanced education and career of truly exceptional graduate music students who have the potential to make a distinguished contribution to the field of music." Holly has appeared in concert as a soloist and as a chamber and orchestral musician throughout the U.S., including residencies at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Jazz at Lincoln Center as a violin fellow with The Orchestra Now. She has also performed in Canada at the Banff Center for the Arts in conjunction with the International Contemporary Ensemble, given a recital tour in Taiwan with harpsichordist Hsiu-Tzu Ryan, performed in England as concertmaster of the Britten Pears Contemporary Music Program, in Switzerland and Luxembourg with the chamber ensemble FENSADENSE as an artist of the Lucerne Festival, and in China as principal second violin with the Manhattan Symphonie during its month-long tour.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Javier Sánchez has been playing the bandoneón for almost 30 years. Between 2005 and 2016, he was a member of the Latin Grammy Award nominee, Rodolfo Mederos’ Orquesta Típica. Sánchez has toured the globe with well-known tango orchestras and tango companies, such as Tango Pasión, Tanguera and Tango Emotion (returning to Japan for 5 consecutive years). Sánchez has played in the most popular tango shows in Buenos Aires, including El Viejo Almacén, Esquina de Carlos Gardel, Café Tortoni, Piazzolla Tango Theater, among others. In 2016, he relocated to the New York metropolitan area and collaborated with a variety of tango groups, the most notable being Aces of Rhythm directed by Pablo Aslan (debuted at Lincoln Center in July of 2017), the Pan American Symphony Orchestra (Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.), and the Astoria Tango Orchestra led by Daniel Binelli (11-piece orquesta típica). In August 2016, he won First Prize at the prestigious Che Bandoneon International Competition judged by bandoneón legend, Victor Lavallén. In 2018, Mr. Sanchez became Musical Director of Che Tangazo orchestra based in Montreal, Canada, making its debut in July at Tango BA Festival and World Cup. In the past five years, Mr. Sanchez has also performed with many renowned tango musicians such as Emilio Solla, Oscar Feldman, Héctor del Curto, and Sverre Indris Joner. In 2019, Mr. Sanchez completed arranging a repertoire of tangos specifically for social dancing and put together a tango quartet called Mala Junta that performed in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Praised for her “soulful bandoneón” (Washington Classical Review), Washington, D.C.-based Heyni Solera has enjoyed a career in the U.S. and abroad playing in performances in Argentina, Canada, and Australia collaborating with prominent musicians in the tango music scene.  She regularly performs with the Da Capo Tango Orchestra, which focuses on playing danceable tangos and is part of the cello-bandoneon duo, Arco & Aire, with cellist Maxfield Wollam-Fisher. She is also the bandoneon player with Solidaridad Tango Orquesta which focuses on female tango musicians in a typically male dominated genre.  As a scholar, she received her Master of Music degree in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has developed the lectures A GPS for Tango Listening: What Makes Tango a Tango? and Today’s Woman in Tango: Carving Out Spaces.  Past projects include playing in the orchestra of the highly praised IN Series production of Le Cabaret de Carmen at Source Theatre in Washington, D.C. and at Baltimore Theatre Project in Baltimore, Maryland. Solera’s current and future projects include “Today’s Tango with Heyni”, a mini-series that features today’s contemporary tango musicians throughout the world, the EP album Overture, an original contemporary tango recording project with Arco & Aire, and a bandoneón duo album, El Bandoneón en Bach, dedicated to J.S. Bach that was released in March 2022.

Rodrigo Avalos, a native of Olavarría, Argentina, is a composer and bandoneón player.  He has performed at prestigious venues including the Teatro Colón, Centro Cultural Kirchner, Usina del Arte, National Intangible Heritage Center in South Korea and Haus Der Musik in Austria. He has also played with distinguished artists such as Victor Lavallén, José Colángelo, Roberto Alvarez, Susana Rinaldi, among others.   Avalos has recorded and produced several albums including Bach en Bandoneón with the Avalos-Solera Duo, La Carmen with his own twelve-piece orchestra, Orquesta Típica La Carmen, and A medianoche with his violin-bandoneon duo.  In 2023, he won First Prize as a bandoneón player at the "Che Bandoneón International Competition" awarded by the Argentine Tango Society at the Stowe Music Tango Festival in Vermont. He has also been awarded a scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes in Argentina to further his work on new compositions.

Salgado and Reyes have been professional dancers and teachers of Argentine Tango for over twenty-five years. With backgrounds in classical ballet, they studied tango in Buenos Aires with some of the best tango masters. Their international performances include the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Aruba, Argentina, Canada, Indonesia, and their native Colombia. Since 2007, they have been based in New York City.  In 2010 they received a nomination in the Latin ACE Award for Best Choreography for their performance in Tango por Ellos in New York City.  In 2018, they placed second in the competition Pelando Variacion held in New York City. In 2012 and 2013, Adriana and Orlando were guest instructors and performers at Dancing at Sea, a dance cruise company for Holland America, Norwegian and Royal Princess. From 2012 to 2014, they performed at Tango Malbec House in New York City. They are recognized for their smooth, romantic, and elegant style. Their teaching focuses on the subtleties of the connection, posture and overall technique fundamentals. Their passion and love for, and their constant dedication to Argentine tango has won them awards in their native Colombia and more recently in the United States where they have become the Argentina Tango-USA Official 2019 Stage Tango champions and the 2021 Tango de Pista/Salon champions. They have been dancing for the Pan American Symphony Orchestra since 2016.

Guillermina Quiroga, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a tango dancer and choreographer.  She studied classical dance and later joined the renowned ballet of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata. Several years later she settled in Buenos Aires where she studied tango dancing.  She became known worldwide from her time with the show Compañía TangoX2 and, later, Tango Argentino, which had great success on Broadway in the 1980’s. She then joined the cast of Forever Tango directed by Luis Bravo and created the dramatic-choreographic-musical multimedia show Tango, historias breves in 2003 which took her to the United States for two tours.  She danced at Carnegie Hall in a homage to Astor Piazzolla with the pianist, Pablo Ziegler; at the opening ceremony of the 1994 World Cup; with Jon Secada at Soldiers Field in Chicago; and with Julio Iglesias in 1997 during his three-year world tour, promoting his album, Tango.  She worked with Argentine pianist, Mariano Mores for 20 years.  She has appeared in several motion pictures, such as Luis Puenzo’s La peste (1991), in which she is showcased in a dancing tango scene; Robert Duvall’s Assassination Tango (2002); and in Valentina's Tango (2007) directed by Rogelio Lobato, in which she played Valentina.  She has been a judge for the World Tango Competition in Moscow, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires. She danced in the rock-opera Evita at New York City Center in 2019, and most recently appeared in Tango Argentino at the World Tango championships in Buenos Aires.   

Mariano Logiudice is a multi-talented dancer, having been a world champion in martial arts, a psychologist, and physical education teacher.   He has performed in tango festivals in Naples, Italy, France, Tunisia, China, Hong Kong, San Francisco (Argentine Tango USA) and in Buenos Aires (World Tango Championship).  In 2018, he performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra at the Eastman Kodak Theater and at Carnegie Hall in New York City.  In 2019, he danced in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s production of Evita, at New York City Center.  Most recently, he danced Tango Argentino at the closing ceremony of the World Tango championship in Buenos Aires.

Carolina Jaurena has 20 years of experience teaching and performing, Carolina has become a multifaceted talent, excelling not only as a dancer but also as a certified RYT yoga instructor and Mandala Dot Artist.  Carolina graced the screen as a primary dancer in the feature film "Random Hearts," directed by the legendary Sidney Pollack. Her performances have spanned a wide range of productions, including "Eternal Tango" alongside Hector del Curto, the show "Tanguero," and "Tango! Soul and Heart” at the Kennedy Center with the Choral Arts Society of Washington. Her artistry extended to the acclaimed off-Broadway production "Tango House," produced by Juan Fabbri. She showcased her talents in several seasons at the esteemed Thalia Spanish Theater in New York. Carolina has danced and conducted workshops across the globe , including a special tango workshop at the Canarias Tango Festival in Spain and one at Landesakademie in Ochsenhausen, Germany, a performance at the Solis Theater in Uruguay for "100 Años de Tango," and performances in Germany at venues such as the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart and the Alte Synagoge in Hechingen.  Carolina has also been an integral part of the Camarada Tango Quartet from San Diego for the past 4 years and most recently performed with the Symphony of Solidarity at Carnegie Hall. She has a deep appreciation for beauty, balance, and self-expression.  Carolina has been dancing with the Pan American Symphony Orchestra for over ten years.

Anton Domansky

Anton is a champion professional ballroom and Latin dancer with over 25 years of competitive and show dance experience. After winning the Ukrainian National Youth Championship at 16, he went on to study with the world’s top teachers in London and Italy. Since immigrating to the US in 2001, he has won multiple US National Youth Ballroom and 10 dance championship titles, and has represented the US in three World Championships. On his first trip to Buenos Aires, Anton fell in love with Argentine tango; 10 years later, he became US National Argentine Stage Tango Champion.

World-renowned Argentine tango dancers Martín Maldonado and Maurizio Ghella began their journey as a tango couple in 2002.

They are equally acclaimed for their masterful teaching and their soulful, elegant performances.

Each brings a deep background in dance, and together they have developed a tango that is both intelligent and provocative, moving and heartfelt—born from their tireless exploration of the body, movement, and sensation.

For the past 23 years, Martín and Maurizio have been sharing their art and knowledge around the world.