Six degrees of separation from Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla

Astor Piazzolla was the father of “new tango” and some of his music will be performed by the Hong Kong Sinfonietta on Tuesday at the Fringe Club, in Central. Born in 1921, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the composer grew up in New York learning to play the piano and bandoneon (a type of concertina). He developed a passion for both the tango and classical music, which he later combined to created nuevo tango. “Traditional tango listeners hated me,” he once told The New York Times. One of his songs, Libertango, features in 1988 film Frantic, directed by Roman Polanski …

Born in Paris, in 1933, Polanski’s family moved back to their native Poland just before the second world war. His parents were sent to different Nazi concentration camps, and his mother perished in Auschwitz. In 1969, Polanski suffered another tragedy: his second wife, actress Sharon Tate, who was heavily pregnant at the time, was murdered by followers of the nutter Charles Manson. That episode influenced his 1971 film Macbeth. Given all the tragedy, parallels can be seen between Polanski’s childhood and that of Oliver Twist, the eponymous protagonist of the filmmaker’s 2005 effort, which is based on the 1838 novel by Charles Dickens …

The British novelist had a rags-to-riches story of his own. In 1824, when he was 12, his father was imprisoned for bad debt and Charles was forced to work in a factory. An eventual move into journalism marked the first step in his literary career. Although he wrote classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ contributions went beyond literature – modern commentators have even described him as “the man who invented Christmas”. In 2002, the BBC listed him as one of the Top 100 Great Britons. Also on the list was Tim Berners-Lee …