#1: Gabriela Ortiz Torres
A Mexican composer and teacher known internationally for her compositions, Gabriela Ortiz's works have been performed at international festivals such as the Cervantino, the Bourges International Festival in France, the Electrifying Exotica and the Plugged Festival in London. Her early musical influences come from her family; her parents were members of the group The Folkloristas, so some of Ortiz’s influences were Mexican and Latin American folk music. She attended the Escuela Nacional de Música, where she obtained a degree in Composition, having as teachers Federico Ibarra and Mario Lavista. With the latter, she also studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música. She finished her studies at the Guidhall School of music and drama where she studied with Robert Saxton, and at the City University of London where she studied electroacoustics with Simmons Emmerson.
ABOUT ATLAS PUMAS
Atlas Pumas is in three movements and scored for marimba and violin. The first movement, Vivo energico e molto ritmico, was really well named by the composer because it gives a lot of energy and dynamism and is like a glass of cool water on a hard summer day. The rhythm is very active and is one of the main factors of the piece. There are some very technical parts, with many fast and complicated passages, combined with other softer and lyrical ones. The dynamics is mostly in the high part of the spectrum although there are some softer parts as I have indicated before. As for the register, it is really wide, especially in the violin, where there are some softer parts. The second movement is totally different from the first one; it is quieter and calmer, the dynamics and character are of expressiveness and uniformity. There are some climactic points but in a less strong dynamic. The rhythm is more stable while the register is still huge with different high and low notes. The third movement is a mix between the other two, with the softness and expressiveness of the second and the energy and virtuosity of the first. So we have a similar treatment in some material but with another air of mythicization and mystery. For me, the third movement is a more diverse and complete movement because of the complexity and variety of the music. I also like the mix of sounds between the violin and the marimba.
-Diego Del Toro
LISTEN TO "ATLAS PUMAS" BY GABRIELA ORTIZ TORRES
ABOUT ATLAS PUMAS
Atlas Pumas is in three movements and scored for marimba and violin. The first movement, Vivo energico e molto ritmico, was really well named by the composer because it gives a lot of energy and dynamism and is like a glass of cool water on a hard summer day. The rhythm is very active and is one of the main factors of the piece. There are some very technical parts, with many fast and complicated passages, combined with other softer and lyrical ones. The dynamics is mostly in the high part of the spectrum although there are some softer parts as I have indicated before. As for the register, it is really wide, especially in the violin, where there are some softer parts. The second movement is totally different from the first one; it is quieter and calmer, the dynamics and character are of expressiveness and uniformity. There are some climactic points but in a less strong dynamic. The rhythm is more stable while the register is still huge with different high and low notes. The third movement is a mix between the other two, with the softness and expressiveness of the second and the energy and virtuosity of the first. So we have a similar treatment in some material but with another air of mythicization and mystery. For me, the third movement is a more diverse and complete movement because of the complexity and variety of the music. I also like the mix of sounds between the violin and the marimba.
-Diego Del Toro
LISTEN TO "ATLAS PUMAS" BY GABRIELA ORTIZ TORRES
#2: Marcos balteR
Marcos Balter was born 1974 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With honors such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, fellowships from Guggenheim, Civitella Ranieri, and Tanglewood Music Center, as well as numerous commissions with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, I.C.E. and others, Balter is considered to be Brazil’s most exciting composer.
ABOUT DESCENT FROM PARNASSUS & DREAMCATCHER
Descent from Parnassus: This tour-de-force solo work was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago for Claire Chase in January 2012. For this work, Marcos Balter drew inspiration from the painting "The First Part of the Return from Parnassus" by artist Cy Twombly. This piece is scored for a flutist doubling a virtuoso vocal part with text taken from Dante’s "Canto Paradiso."
Dreamcatcher: Dreamcatcher was written as a response to the horrors brought about by the family separation crisis, which resulted from the Trump administration. The piece was sponsored by Active Listening and the Presser Foundation. In the piece, the listener is immediately enraptured by a complex web of sound that defies any solid sense of time. In this light, one can hear the innocence of childhood swirling endlessly in an unending chaotic spiral.
-DeShaun Gordon-King
LISTEN TO DESCENT FROM PARNASSUS
LISTEN TO DREAMCATCHER
ABOUT DESCENT FROM PARNASSUS & DREAMCATCHER
Descent from Parnassus: This tour-de-force solo work was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago for Claire Chase in January 2012. For this work, Marcos Balter drew inspiration from the painting "The First Part of the Return from Parnassus" by artist Cy Twombly. This piece is scored for a flutist doubling a virtuoso vocal part with text taken from Dante’s "Canto Paradiso."
Dreamcatcher: Dreamcatcher was written as a response to the horrors brought about by the family separation crisis, which resulted from the Trump administration. The piece was sponsored by Active Listening and the Presser Foundation. In the piece, the listener is immediately enraptured by a complex web of sound that defies any solid sense of time. In this light, one can hear the innocence of childhood swirling endlessly in an unending chaotic spiral.
-DeShaun Gordon-King
LISTEN TO DESCENT FROM PARNASSUS
LISTEN TO DREAMCATCHER
#3: Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga
Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga (1847-1935) was a composer, conductor, educator, and activist in turn-of-the-century Brazil. Better known as Chiquinha, she eschewed traditional expectations of women in order to pursue music. She left her first husband after he forbade her to play the piano, which was quite the scandal. Her parents refused to take her in, so she turned to music to support herself. While women often played music in the home, a woman becoming a professional musician was unheard of at the time. She quickly became a pioneer in the field with her 1877 composition “Atraente.” Although it was originally labeled a polka, “Atraente”' was part of an emerging genre in Brazilian music called choro. Choro synthesized elements of ragtime, polka, and Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Chiquinha embraced the diversity of Brazil in her compositional style, refusing to shy away from instruments and styles associated with the lower class. She wrote over 2,000 pieces in a wide variety of genres including, waltzes, tangos, choros, and settings of plays. Her lyrics criticized the social conventions of the day, and her disapproving family. She was a fierce abolitionist who used revenue from her music to support the cause. She also founded the Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Teatrais, the first association for theatrical authors’ copyrights, which is still active today. Gonzaga continued to compose until 1933, just two years before her death.
ABOUT Ó ABRE ALAS
“Ó abre alas” (1899) was the first Marchinha de Carnaval, or carnival march, ever composed. Chiquinha wrote the piece during a rehearsal of the Rosa de Ouro carnival group while living in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte neighborhood. The Carnaval celebrations of the time were not as organized as they are today, and while music was sometimes included, no one had composed a piece for a specific group before. With Ó abre alas, Gonzaga both created the carnival march and anticipated the central role that music would come to hold in Carnaval traditions. The carnival march’s rise to fame would not come for twenty years after the composition of Ó abre alas. In the meantime, Chiquinha adapted the piece for Batista Coelho's 1904 play Não venhas! This adapted version was the only one published until 1939, when a journalist began work on the first biography of Chiquinha. The piece remains an unofficial Carnaval anthem.
-Natasha Buckman
LISTEN TO Ó ABRE ALAS HERE
ABOUT Ó ABRE ALAS
“Ó abre alas” (1899) was the first Marchinha de Carnaval, or carnival march, ever composed. Chiquinha wrote the piece during a rehearsal of the Rosa de Ouro carnival group while living in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte neighborhood. The Carnaval celebrations of the time were not as organized as they are today, and while music was sometimes included, no one had composed a piece for a specific group before. With Ó abre alas, Gonzaga both created the carnival march and anticipated the central role that music would come to hold in Carnaval traditions. The carnival march’s rise to fame would not come for twenty years after the composition of Ó abre alas. In the meantime, Chiquinha adapted the piece for Batista Coelho's 1904 play Não venhas! This adapted version was the only one published until 1939, when a journalist began work on the first biography of Chiquinha. The piece remains an unofficial Carnaval anthem.
-Natasha Buckman
LISTEN TO Ó ABRE ALAS HERE
#4: Teresa Carreño
Teresa Carreño (1853-1917), often referred to as the “Valkyrie of the Piano” was a Venezuelan pianist, soprano, conductor, and composer best known for her virtuosity as a pianist and her 75 works written for voice, piano, orchestra, or small instrumental ensembles; the majority of which she wrote before the age of 22. She was born in Caracas, Venezuela and moved with her family to New York City in 1862 at the age of eight. Quickly recognized as a child prodigy, she performed in concert halls across the United States before her family moved to Paris, where she met many prominent musicians and performed in regular concerts across Europe. She hoped to return to Venezuela to start an opera company, but those plans fizzled due to political unrest, dissatisfied audiences, and abandoned musical posts. She ended up returning to the United States and continued to establish herself as a virtuoso pianist and play alongside (and befriend) many prolific opera singers, orchestras, composers, and conductors both in the US and in Europe. Conductor Henry Wood described her as “...a queen among pianists...and played like a goddess... Her masculine vigour of tone and touch and her marvellous precision on executing octave passages carried everyone completely away.”
ABOUT CORBEILLE DES FLEURS, VALSE, OP. 9
Corbeille des fleurs, Valse, Op. 9, written for piano by Teresa Carreño in 1867, begins with a sweet and pensive melodic introduction followed by a murmuring half-step modulation reminiscent of Souvenirs d'Andalousie' by Louis Morea Gottschalk, a composer that promoted her playing at a young age and for whom she named Gottschalk’s Waltz, Op. 1, her first composition published at the age of ten. The piece careens into a sparkly array of arpeggios before diving into a presto waltz, showcasing Carreño’s virtuosic style and giving hints of influence from Frédéric Chopin, whose works she frequently performed.
-Liz Derstine
LISTEN TO CORBEILLE DES FLEURS, VALSE, OP. 9 HERE
ABOUT CORBEILLE DES FLEURS, VALSE, OP. 9
Corbeille des fleurs, Valse, Op. 9, written for piano by Teresa Carreño in 1867, begins with a sweet and pensive melodic introduction followed by a murmuring half-step modulation reminiscent of Souvenirs d'Andalousie' by Louis Morea Gottschalk, a composer that promoted her playing at a young age and for whom she named Gottschalk’s Waltz, Op. 1, her first composition published at the age of ten. The piece careens into a sparkly array of arpeggios before diving into a presto waltz, showcasing Carreño’s virtuosic style and giving hints of influence from Frédéric Chopin, whose works she frequently performed.
-Liz Derstine
LISTEN TO CORBEILLE DES FLEURS, VALSE, OP. 9 HERE
#5: susana Baca
Susana Baca is a leading performer and ethnomusicologist committed to promoting Afro-Peruvian music worldwide. Born in Chorrillos in 1944, Baca studied her Afro-Peruvian roots, offering essays and recordings based on her fieldwork in the towns of Chorrillos, Trujillo and El Carmen. In 1992 she founded the Instituto Negrocontinuo with her husband Ricardo Pereira, in order to preserve the music and culture of Black Peru for future generations, and currently helps young artists record and publish new material. About the process of studying her country’s history, Susana is quoted saying “through this process, I came face to face with the past and I had to be strong. I read a lot; it wasn’t very pleasant. There were moments I didn’t want to continue, I didn’t want to know anymore about the atrocities of history. The amount of music lost in Peru is incredible. An old musician dies and his tradition dies with him. The worst part is that the youth don’t know about it.” Her international presence began in 1995, when she performed on a compilation album called Afro-Peruvian Classics: The Soul of Black Peru, at a time when the music of Peru’s African population was little recognized either internationally or in Peru itself. Since that time she has brought Afro-Peruvian to countless stages across the world, sharing with the world music which is characterized by traditional Afro-Peruvian instruments cajón, udu, quijada, and cheko.
ABOUT SORONGO
Sorongo, a track on an album called Palabras Urgentes, or Urgent Words, brings Baca’s emphasis of recognizing and learning from the past to front and center by directly addressing the injustices of Peru’s past. She sings of her grandmother being taken from Africa and enslaved “singing their sad fate to the beat of chains.” In the piece we hear distinct African rhythms, a sound which Baca was very adamant about emphasizing in the record’s production. The track’s producer, Michael League reports on the recording process: “"This is like a freight train and stands apart from the rest of the record in that way but Susana was really, really adamant about feeling Africa in Sorongo, so we made a lot of really interesting decisions during the recording process about textures and sounds and structure to make you feel the connection between the sugar fields in Peru and the African roots of the people who were enslaved and working them.” Susana Baca’s commitment to bringing awareness to the Afro-Peruvian culture and Peruvian history has been shared prolifically in many ways throughout her career, and can also be experienced directly in this one selection.
-Cassie Kollman
LISTEN TO SORONGO HERE
ABOUT SORONGO
Sorongo, a track on an album called Palabras Urgentes, or Urgent Words, brings Baca’s emphasis of recognizing and learning from the past to front and center by directly addressing the injustices of Peru’s past. She sings of her grandmother being taken from Africa and enslaved “singing their sad fate to the beat of chains.” In the piece we hear distinct African rhythms, a sound which Baca was very adamant about emphasizing in the record’s production. The track’s producer, Michael League reports on the recording process: “"This is like a freight train and stands apart from the rest of the record in that way but Susana was really, really adamant about feeling Africa in Sorongo, so we made a lot of really interesting decisions during the recording process about textures and sounds and structure to make you feel the connection between the sugar fields in Peru and the African roots of the people who were enslaved and working them.” Susana Baca’s commitment to bringing awareness to the Afro-Peruvian culture and Peruvian history has been shared prolifically in many ways throughout her career, and can also be experienced directly in this one selection.
-Cassie Kollman
LISTEN TO SORONGO HERE
#6: Lida Melba Benevidez Tabarez (Lagrima Rios)
Lagrima Rios (1924-2006) is the stage name of Lida Melba Benevidez Tabarez, who was an Uruguayan tango singer, and the first known Black tango singer. Her introduction to music and her ambitions to become a dancer came about when her mother was working as a housemaid for a family in Montevideo that owned a radio, where she would first hear tango music. Montevideo would be the primary base for Rios. She lived her childhood in extreme poverty, so she started working young. She worked various odd jobs, including as a cook to the ambassador to the United States, where she would hear the blues and jazz for the first time. 1942 saw her performing debut, performing Uruguayan folk songs and tangos. She also started an a capella group in Montevideo, with whom she would sing spirtuals. Her claim to fame came about as she had won a singing competition in 1956, put on by the local newspaper La Tribuna Popular and radio station CX24. By 1972, she had recorded her first LP under the name of Lagrima Rios, and the collection was called La Perla Negra del Tango. This was one of many collaborations with Candombe, a guitar and drum group. Rios’ family arrived in Uruguay by way of her grandmother, who was travelling with ex-slaves who escaped from Brazil. She travelled to South Africa as a representative of Mundoafro, an advocacy group that fought racism in South America. Rios would perform all throughout Uruguay and Argentina, and later in life she would perform in Europe as well, particularly she performed on stages in Sweden and France. She would die in 2006 in Montevideo, Uruguay, presumably of natural causes. Her legacy is preserved as she is featured in El Café de los Maestros, a film that features several different tango legends, including Horatio Salgan, Virginia Luque, Mariano Mores, and herself.
ABOUT NEGRA MARIA
Negra Maria, translating to “Black Mary,” is a song about a black woman dancer of the tango, who is loved by the crowd and the band. This is one of many songs that Rios collaborated with the ensemble Candombe on. While some meaning may be lost in translation, my interpretation of the lyrics is that this song is a celebration of Black joy in tango. The song ends in lamentation, as the titular Black Mary has died. The lyrics open with the word “bruna,” repeated twice. I believe this is supposed to be a shade of brown, as the closest translations I could find of the word is “dark brown, brown, black, blackish.” Below is the last verse of the song, translated to English:
ABOUT NEGRA MARIA
Negra Maria, translating to “Black Mary,” is a song about a black woman dancer of the tango, who is loved by the crowd and the band. This is one of many songs that Rios collaborated with the ensemble Candombe on. While some meaning may be lost in translation, my interpretation of the lyrics is that this song is a celebration of Black joy in tango. The song ends in lamentation, as the titular Black Mary has died. The lyrics open with the word “bruna,” repeated twice. I believe this is supposed to be a shade of brown, as the closest translations I could find of the word is “dark brown, brown, black, blackish.” Below is the last verse of the song, translated to English:
Oh, how sad was your destiny,
speck angel, brown carnation! Oh how dark your bed will be! Oh what silence your dream will have! You go to heaven, Black Mary... The mother cries, the girl sleeps. Black... they will bleed for you guitars and violins And the anguish of the bandoneon. We will mourn you, Black Mary... Black Maria, you closed The eyes in Carnival. |