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Program Notes C��

The Chicago Community Trust, our region’s community foundation, is proud to support the Grant Park Music Festival on its 75th anniversary.

For more information about The Chicago Community Trust, please go to www.cct.org.

“To stop the flowof music would belike the stopping of

time itself, incredibleand inconceivable.”

AAron CoPelAnd

GrantParkMusicFestivalSeventy-fifth Season

Grant Park Orchestra and ChorusCarlos Kalmar, Principal ConductorChristopher Bell, Chorus Director

Fifteenth Program: Luna Negra Dance Theater and Luciana SouzaWednesday, July 22, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 24, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker PavilionGRANT PARK ORChESTRATito Muñoz, ConductorLuciana Souza, Vocalist Romero Lubambo, GuitarLuna Negra Dance Theater Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director

COPLAND Danzón Cubano

arr. BARILARI/JUARENA Tango Vitrola

La Cumparsita – El Llorón (Milonga) — Pena Mulata – El Porteñito Choreographed by ALEJANDRO CERVERA

RODRIGO Adagio from the Concierto de Aranjuez arr. Goldstein, after Miles Davis

REVUELTAS Sensemayá

INTERMISSION

CUGAT Cugat! arr. Morales after Angel Meléndez Old-Fashioned — Bésame Mucho — Mambo Gordo Choreographed by EDUARDO VILARO

Duets by Luciana Souza and Romero Lubambo

Adeus América (Barbosa & Jacques) Chuva (Souza & Leminski) Circus Life (Souza, Klein & Batteau)

SIERRA Fandangos

arr. GOLDSTEIN Bossa Nova

Sai Dessa (Marques & Terra) Trocando em Miúdos (hime & Buarque) Corcovado (Jobim) Chorinho Pra Ele (Pascoal) Choreographed by EDUARDO VILARO

Presenting Sponsor: The Chicago Community TrustWednesday Night Sponsor: Bank of America

Additional support made possible by The Boeing Company Charitable Trust

C�6 Program Notes

TiTO MuñOz is becoming recognized as one of the most gifted conductors of his generation. he is currently Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and a League of American Orchestras Conducting Fellow, previously serving as Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. An alumnus of the National Conducting Institute, Mr. Muñoz made his professional conducting debut in 2006 with the National Symphony Orchestra followed by his Cleveland Orchestra debut at the Blossom Music Festival. Other recent engagements

include his critically acclaimed subscription debut with the Cincinnati Symphony as well as appearances with the Cincinnati Pops, Detroit Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, and the Princeton Symphony. In Europe, he made debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy and the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence, and made his operatic debut with the Opéra National de Lorraine. Next season, Mr. Muñoz will lead the Toledo Symphony and return for performances with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy. Born in 1983 in New York City, Mr. Muñoz began his musical training on violin in the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, continuing studies at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division. he furthered his training at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, as a violin student of Daniel Phillips and studied conducting with David Zinman at the Aspen Music Festival.

Grammy winner LuCiAnA SOuzA is one of Jazz’s leading singers and interpreters. hailing from São Paulo, Brazil, she grew up in a family of Bossa Nova innovators. her work as a performer transcends traditional boundaries around musical styles, offering solid roots in jazz, sophisticated lineage in world music, and an enlightened approach to classical repertoire and new music. As a leader, Luciana Souza has seven acclaimed releases including her three Grammy nominated records “Brazilian Duos,” 2002, “North and South,” 2003, and “Duos II,” 2005. her debut recording for Universal/Verve, “The New Bossa Nova,” (2007) was met with critical acclaim and offers an exquisite and personal interpretation on songs by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Steely Dan, as well as a sublime duet with James Taylor. The record was produced by Ms. Souza’s husband, Larry Klein. Ms. Souza has performed and recorded with greats like herbie hancock, Paul Simon, Maria Schneider, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, hermeto Pascoal, and many others. her complete discography contains more than 50 records as a side singer. Luciana Souza’s singing has been called “transcendental, perfect” and of “unparalleled beauty.” Entertainment Weekly said, “her voice traces a landscape of emotion that knows no boundaries.” Luciana Souza has been a prominent soloist in two important works by composer Osvaldo Golijov – La Pasion According to St. Mark, and Oceana. She has performed with the Bach Akademie Stuttgart, the Boston and Atlanta Symphonies, and the Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics.

In 1985, ROMERO LuBAMBO came to the United States and with him a new sound in Brazilian jazz guitar. From the cool, sophisticated rhythms of his native Brazil to hard bop, Romero Lubambo is a guitarist comfortable in any musical setting. he is an uncommonly gifted soloist, always having a steady stream of unpredictably creative musical thoughts and the virtuosity to deliver them ever so tastefully. Romero’s guitar playing brings together the styles and rhythms of his native Brazilian musical heritage with his fluency in the American jazz tradition to form

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Wednesday, July 22 and Friday, July 24, 2009


In just ten years, Luna Negra Dance Theater has established itself as a significant and vital component of Chicago’s arts and cultural community. Since Eduardo Vilaro founded Luna Negra in 1999, the company has served as a springboard for Latino contemporary choreographers to give expression to their stories and bring new life to the cultures of their communities.

Steering away from stereotypes and folkloric representations, Luna Negra offers its audiences energetic, powerful, and passionate contemporary Latino dance, reflecting the immense cultural shift that is shaping America in the 21st century.

With its breathtaking artistry and unique fusion of contemporary and Latino dance movements, Luna Negra inspires us, delights us and surprises us at every turn.

www.lunanegra.org

“Raw beauty in fluid movement”— Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

“Mysterious storytelling to pure, hip-swiveling celebration.”

— Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

“Luna Negra shattered stereotypes while crafting true postmodern re-imaginings of [Latino] cultures”

— Lucia Mauro, Chicago Tribune

Photo by Cheryl Mann

C�� Program Notes

a distinctive new sound. After arriving in New York City, Romero quickly established himself as a “first call” session and touring guitarist who was in demand not only for his authentic Brazilian sound, but also for his command with a variety of styles. Lubambo has performed and recorded with many outstanding artists, including Dianne Reeves, Michael Brecker, Yo-Yo Ma, Kathleen Battle, Diana Krall, herbie Mann, Wynton Marsalis, Luciana Souza, Paula Robison, Regina Carter, and Cesar Camargo Mariano among many others. he has also established himself as a composer and performer on his own critically acclaimed recording projects as well as on those of Trio Da Paz, a Brazilian jazz trio Lubambo formed with Nilson Matta and Duduka da Fonseca. Romero Lubambo is considered by critics to be “ the best practitioner of his craft in the world today ... the guitarist’s facility, creativity and energy are in a class all their own.”

EDuARDO ViLARO (Founder and Artistic Director, Luna Negra Dance Theater – havana, Cuba) founded Luna Negra Dance Theater in 1999. Vilaro’s work with Luna Negra is devoted to capturing the spiritual, sensual and historical essence of Latino culture. Through contemporary dance, he fosters and creates works that explore Latino culture’s racial and ethnic diverse movements in fresh ways that speak to modern audiences. his work often includes collaborations with artists of other disciplines and he has created works with renowned artists such as Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca, visual artist Luis De

La Torre, and soprano harolyn Blackwell. Vilaro was born in havana, Cuba, and immigrated to New York City where he grew up in the Bronx. he received his dance training at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and then earned a BFA in Dance from Adelphi University in 1988. Vilaro was a principal dancer with Ballet hispanico of New York where he taught and performed until 1996. Under the mentorship of Tina Ramirez, Vilaro developed as an educator by creating and implementing outreach and education programs in New York City. he has taught and toured throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America, and the Middle East. In 1999, after earning a Masters degree from Columbia College Chicago, his passion for his heritage and dance led him to establish Luna Negra Dance Theater. In 2001, he was a recipient of a Ruth Page Award in choreography and in 2003, he was honored at Panama’s II International Festival of Ballet for his choreographic work. Vilaro has been on the faculty of the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and the Chicago Academy of the Arts. he currently serves on the Board of Directors of Dance/USA and the Arts and Business Council of Chicago.

ALEJAnDRO CERVERA studied music at the Conservatorio Municipal Manuel de Falla and was trained in dance at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón and the School of Contemporary Dance directed by Oscar Araiz, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. he worked with well-known teachers such as Ilse Wiedmann, Wassil Tupin, Norma Binaghi, Renate Schotellius, Ana Maria Stekelman, Betty Jones, Jennifer Muller and Miguel Angel Soto. Between 1977 and 1985, Cervera was a member of the Contemporary Ballet of the Teatro General San Martin of Buenos Aires before assuming directorship of the company in 1985. Cervera’s name became better-known to the North American public after his company was first invited to perform at the American Dance Festival and the Kennedy Center in the mid-1980s. he has since received numerous invitations to return to the festival to perform, teach and collaborate with American companies. hailed as a leading creative force in his native Argentina, Cervera is widely acclaimed for his work, not only in dance, but in opera, theater and music. he has choreographed works for companies throughout Argentina, Mexico and, through the American Dance Festival. Presently, Cervera is the Executive Director of Prodanza, in Buenos Aires.


Program Notes C�9

Wednesday, July 22 and Friday, July 24, 2009 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

About LunA negrA DAnce theAter

Luna Negra’s distinctive style blends the discipline of ballet with the dynamic movements of contemporary dance, infused with the explosive energy of Latin and Afro-Caribbean dance forms. The company prides itself in presenting the works of renowned Latino master choreographers such as Vicente Nebrada and José Limón, as well as contemporary Latino choreographers Septime Webre, Alejandro Cervera, Michelle Manzanales, Annabelle Ochoa Lopez, and others. The company also collaborates with visual artists, media artists, musicians and composers, including the world renowned Peruvian singer Susana Baca, Chicago Sinfonietta, Tiempo Libre and the Ravinia Festival. These collaborations have fostered innovative cross-disciplinary explorations resulting in richly textured and highly original, contemporary dance theater.

DAnce in the community

Luna Negra Dance Theater brings energy and dance education to classrooms and communities through its Dance Reach program to more than 10,000 students in Chicago and beyond each year. We believe dance can be a powerful tool for exploring cultural identity, providing positive role models for Latino and other minority students, promoting self-awareness and creating positive self-esteem. Our wide range of education programs includes in-school residencies, in-school performances, student matinees, family matinees, community performances, and special workshops for the community.

Photo by Kristie Kahns

C�0 Program Notes

danzón CuBanO (1946)Aaron Copland (1900-1990)The Danzón Cubano calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano and strings. The performance time is seven minutes. This is the work’s first performance by the Grant Park Orchestra.

In the early months of 1941, when it was becoming apparent that the United States would be directly touched by the worsening conflicts in Europe and Asia, a determined effort was made to strengthen the country’s relations with its neighbors, and Aaron Copland was sent as a cultural ambassador by the Coordinator of Inter-American Relations on a good-will tour of nine Latin American nations. It was in havana, a city he had visited in 1937 on the way home following the premiere in Mexico City of El Sálon México, that he found the inspiration for what became the Danzón Cubano. Recalled the composer, “The popular Cuban dance style known as danzón has a very special character. It is a stately dance, quite different from the rhumba, conga and tango, and one that fulfills a function rather similar to that of the waltz in our own music, providing contrast to some of the more animated dances. I first came upon it in a havana dance hall and found it great fun to watch — in fact, I spent more than one night so engaged. The danzón is not the familiar hectic, flashy and rhythmically complicated type of Cuban dance. It is more elegant and curt and is very precise, as dance music goes. The dance itself seemed especially amusing to me because it has a touch of unconscious grotesquerie, as if it were an impression of ‘high-life’ as seen through the eyes of the populace — elegance perceived by the inelegant.”

The original, two-piano version of Danzón Cubano was written for a New York concert in 1942 marking the twentieth anniversary of the League of Composers, and premiered, under the title Birthday Piece (On Cuban Themes), by Copland and Leonard Bernstein on December 17th in Town hall. The score was orchestrated in 1944, and has become one of Copland’s most familiar short pieces. “The two contrasting sections of the Danzón Cubano,” wrote the composer, “make use of simple Cuban dances — simple from the melodic standpoint, but with polyrhythms and the synco-pated beat typical of the danzón. I did not attempt to reproduce an authentic Cuban sound, but felt free to add my own touches of displaced accents and unexpected silent beats. In fact, I arranged one of the tunes in the traditional ‘blues rhythm,’ giving the final product something of an inter-American flavor. The mood of the piece alternates between passages of rhythmic precision and a kind of non-sentimental sweetness under a nonchalant guise.”

— Dr. Richard E. Rodda

tanGO VitrOla (1987)Choreographed by Alejandro CerveraArranged by elbio Barilari and raul JaurenaCostume Design by Alejandro Cervera

The Argentinean tango, like American ragtime and jazz, is music with a shady past. Its deepest roots extend to Africa and the fiery dances of Spain, but it seems to have evolved most directly from a slower Cuban dance, the habanera (whose name honors that nation’s capital), and a faster native Argentinean song form, the milonga, both in duple meter and both sensuously syncopated in rhythm. These influences met at the end of the 19th century in the docklands and seamier neigh-borhoods of Buenos Aires, where they found fertile ground for gestation as the influx of workers streaming in from Europe to seek their fortunes in the pampas and cities of South America came into contact with the exotic Latin cultures. The tango — its name may have been derived from a word of African origin meaning simply “dance,” or from the old Castilian taño (“to play an instru-ment”), or from a type of drum used by black slaves, or from none of these — came to embody the longing and hard lives of the lower classes of Buenos Aires, where it was chiefly fostered in bawdy




houses and back-alley bars by usually untutored musicians. The texts, where they existed, dealt with such forlorn urban topics as faithless women, social injustice and broken dreams. In the years around World War I, the tango migrated out of the seedier neighborhoods of Argentina, leaped across the Atlantic to be discovered by the French, and then went on to invade the rest of Europe and North America. International repute elevated its social status, and, spurred by the glamorous images of Rudolph Valentino and Vernon and Irene Castle, the tango became the dance craze of the 1930s. Tango bands, comprising four to six players (usually piano, accordion, guitar and strings) with or without a vocalist, flourished during the years between the world wars, and influenced not just the world’s popular music but also that of serious composers: one of Isaac Albéniz’s most famous works is his Tango in D; William Walton inserted a tango into his “Entertainment with Poems” for speaker and instruments, Façade; and Igor Stravinsky had the Devil in The Soldier’s Tale dance a tango and composed a Tango for Piano, which he also arranged for full orchestra and for winds with guitar and bass.

In Tango Vitrola, Alejandro Cervera conjures a metaphysical space that highlights the struggle between men and women through simple, yet poetic patterns. Says Cervera: “My inspiration for Tango Vitrola came from memories of people dancing, tables, chairs and old sound. It is not easy for me to speak about my own work, but as I think about Tango Vitrola a few words come to mind: desire, sensuality, sexuality, rejection and passion.”

La Cumparsita, tango’s quintessential musical embodiment, was written in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1917 by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez (1897-1948), an architecture student with musical ambitions. Rodríguez sold the rights to the song to the Breyer publishing house of Buenos Aires for a mod-est amount, but later, when La Cumparsita became the most famous tango melody in the world, he managed to secure a portion of its royalties through a lengthy series of court trials. (he won on the basis that he had surrendered the copyright while still a minor.) Rodríguez’s original lyrics distill the world-weary mood of many tangos: The little parade of endless miseries promenades around the sickbed of one who will soon die of sorrow.

El Llorón (“The Weeping One”) is thought to have originated around 1890, during the earliest days of tango, but it was registered in 1933 under the name of the Argentinean dancer Ambrosio Radrizzani, who died in a theater fire in Buenos Aires ten years later.

Pena Mulata (1940, “The Pain of a Mulatto Woman”) was one of the many popular pieces created by the team of composer Sebastían Piana (1903-1994) and lyricist homero Manzi (1907-1951) that emphasized tango’s strong African rhythmic elements.

Composer, lyricist, guitarist and singer Ángel Villoldo (1861-1919) was one of the pioneers of tango. Born in Buenos Aires, he celebrated his hometown in the 1903 “Tango Criollo” (i.e., a Latin American of European descent) El Porteñito: I am the son of Buenos Aires, by the nickname “The Porteñito.”

— Luna Negra Dance Theater

SeCOND mOvemeNt (adaGiO) FrOm the COnCiertO de aranjuez (1939)Joaquín rodrigo (1901-1999)Arranged by gil goldstein, after miles Davis

The small town of Aranjuez, thirty miles south of Madrid on the River Tagus, is a green oasis in the barren plateau of central Spain. In the mid-18th century, a palace, set amid verdant forests and parks, was built at Aranjuez as a summer retreat for the Spanish court. Generations of Spanish kings thereafter settled into Aranjuez every spring, when the countless nightingales would serenade them from the cedars and laurels, the court ladies would promenade in the cooling shade, and the men would hone their equestrian skills with the famous cream-colored Andalusian horses bred nearby. When Rodrigo sought inspiration for a new concerto in the difficult, war-torn year of 1939, it was to the elegant


symbol of by-gone Spain represented by Aranjuez that he turned. “having conceived the idea of a guitar concerto,” he recalled, “it was necessary for me to place it in a certain epoch and, still more, in a definite location — an epoch at the end of which fandangos transform themselves into fandan-guillos, and when the cante and the bulerias vibrate in the Spanish air.” The Adagio is imbued with the bittersweet intensity of classic flamenco cante hondo (“deep song”).


sensemayá (1938)Silvestre revueltas (1899-1940)Sensemayá calls for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clari-net, two B-flat clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, piano and strings. The performance time is seven minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 6, �966, Kenneth Schermerhorn conducting.

When asked why he did not quote existing songs and dances in his music, Silvestre Revueltas replied, “Why should I put on boots and climb mountains for Mexican folklore, if I have the spirit deep within me?” This philosophy, that true Mexican music lies in the hearts and everyday activities of its people rather than in some remote site, was not only an answer to a specific question, but also suggests the very essence of Revueltas’ work. All of Revueltas’ mu-sic derives from the lore, geography, sounds and soul of his native land, and the title and content of each of his works celebrates some unique Mexican trait. The rhythms, melodies and ethos of Mexico are the foundations of his style, as he pointed up in a comment in a 1932 letter to the mu-sicologist and authority on Latin American music Nicolas Slonimsky. “I like all kinds of music,” he wrote. “I can even tolerate some of the classics, and some of my own compositions, but I prefer the music of the people of the ranchos and villages of my country.”

Revueltas was born to a merchant family of small success in a little town in the northern state of Durango. he began playing the violin at an early age. At thirteen, he went to Mexico City to study performance and composition, and then lived in the United States from 1916 to 1920 to at-tend schools in Austin and Chicago. he pursued a concert career in Mexico in 1921 and 1922, but decided to return to Chicago to finish his course of study. Having gained additional experience while securing his diploma, he was accomplished enough as a performer to join the distinguished Mexican musician Carlos Chávez in a series of recitals in his homeland which introduced a num-ber of important chamber works to that country. From 1926 to 1928, back in the United States, he worked as a theater violinist and orchestra conductor in San Antonio and Mobile, Alabama. In 1929, Chávez summoned Revueltas to Mexico to become his assistant with the newly formed Orquesta Sinfónica de México. It was during his seven years in that post, and with the encourage-ment of Chávez, that Revueltas undertook serious work as a composer. he also became involved with the cause of workers’ and artists’ rights during that volatile time, and in 1937 went to Spain to conduct concerts of his own music in support of the Loyalist government. he returned to Mexico City the following year, overburdening himself with a plethora of activities in an attempt to defeat the poverty that had plagued him throughout his life, and he took to drink to ease the strain. On October 5, 1940, at the age of forty, Revueltas died of pneumonia precipitated by his crushing life style, an incalculable loss to Mexican music. In a fitting posthumous tribute, his remains were moved to the Rotunda de los Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City on March 3, 1976.

Sensemayá of 1938 came near the end of the single decade that comprised Revueltas’ activity as a composer. The title is a Mayan word referring to a ritualistic rhythm or song, the work being in-spired by verses of the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén about the ceremonial sacrifice of a deadly snake by an African tribe. Sensemayá depicts this pagan ritual through a throbbingly visceral yet carefully controlled primitivism characterized by ostinato rhythms, irregular meters, prominent percussion and brass, great waves of sound, clear and memorable melodies and a high level of ear-tingling dis-sonance. In atmosphere and effect it is related to such other 20th-century masterworks of musical primitivism as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro and Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite. Sensemayá is a work of savage energy, stimulating brilliance and unique musical personality.




CuGat! (2007)Xavier Cugat (1900-1990)Choreographed by eduardo vilaroArranged by mariano morales after Angel meléndezCostume Design by Soule golden

Xavier Cugat was America’s “King of the Rumba,” the bandleader who helped to popularize the wide range of Latin musical styles through his many recordings, performances, broadcasts, and movie and television appearances. Born Francisco de Asís Javier Cugat Mingall de Brú y Denolfeo on New Year’s Day 1900 in the Catalan city of Gerona, in the far northeast corner of Spain, he moved with his family to havana in 1904 and soon showed prodigal gifts as a musician, playing vio-lin in Havana cafés by age seven and joining the orchestra of the National Theater five years later. Cugat studied classical music in Berlin as a teenager, but he began his career after settling in New York in 1921 by joining the band of Vincent Lopez, one of the pioneers of radio broadcasts of live music. Cugat moved to Los Angeles a few years later, where he supplemented his musical work by drawing cartoons and caricatures for the Los Angeles Times. In 1928, he formed his own orchestra to play the newest dance craze, the tango, and enjoyed such spectacular success with appearances at the Coconut Grove nightclub that he was contracted as the house band at New York’s trend-set-ting Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1930. He was the country’s most commercially successful figure in popular Latin music during the next three decades, balancing performances with radio broadcasts, recordings and appearances in some two-dozen feature films between 1930 and 1970, including You Were Never Lovelier (1942, starring Fred Astaire and Rita hayworth), Bathing Beauty (1944, Esther Williams, Red Skelton), Week-End at the Waldorf (1945, Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Van Johnson) and Neptune’s Daughter (1949, Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán). Cugat also earned considerable publicity for his four marriages, the last of which, on August 5, 1966, to the sultry Spanish guitarist, actress and singer Charo, was the first one celebrated at the just-opened Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. After a stroke ended his career in 1971, Cugat returned to Spain. he died in Barcelona in 1990.

Old-Fashioned (by A. Guijarro and J. Sola) is a beguine, a dance type similar in style and music to a slow rumba that originated in the West Indies. Bésame Mucho (“Kiss Me a Lot”) was written in 1941 by the precocious sixteen-year-old Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez, who said that she based the melody on Quejas, ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (“Laments, or the Maja and the Nightingale”) from Granados’ Goyescas. Mambo Gordo, by trumpeter George Lopez, represents a dance and musical style of Cuban origin that became enormously popular in America in the 1930s.

The creation of CUGAT! was made possible by a generous gift from June Bild Pinsof

— Luna Negra Dance Theateradeus amériCa (haroldo Barbosa & geraldo Jacques)ChuVa (luciana Souza & paulo leminski)CirCus life (luciana Souza, larry Klein & David Batteau)

Opening this duo set is the song Adeus América. Featured on Souza’s new album entitled Tide (Universal Jazz France/ Verve), the song is considered an anthem of Brazilians living abroad — a humorous samba that looks longingly back at Brazil from America. Chuva is based on a style of music from the northeast of Brazil, the Baião, and is a setting on a poem by Paulo Leminski (1944-1989), considered the leading voice of his generation. The lyrics are an exquisite meditation on mindfulness in the face of adversity. Circus Life, also featured on Tide, is a samba that addresses the expatriate’s eternal feelings of placelessness — one always feels like a foreigner in an adopted home. She longs for the place that she comes from, but can never entirely feel at home there again, now that she has moved on.

— Luciana Souza



fandanGOs (2001)roberto Sierra (born in 1953)Fandangos calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings. The performance time is twelve minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on July 21, 2004, Leslie Dunner conducting.

Roberto Sierra, one of the leading figures in American music today, was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico on October 9, 1953. After graduating from the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico in 1976, he attended the Royal College of Music and the University of London (1976-1978), and then pursued further study at the Institute for Sonol-ogy in Utrecht, holland. From 1979 to 1982, he was a pupil of György Ligeti at the hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. Sierra returned to Puerto Rico in 1982, serving first as Director of the Cultural Activities Program at the University of Puerto Rico and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. From 1989 to 1992, he was Composer-in-Residence with the Mil-waukee Symphony Orchestra; he has since held residencies with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New Mexico Symphony and Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. In the autumn of 1992, Sierra joined the composition faculty at Cornell University, succeeding the retiring Karel husa. Sierra’s distinctions include awards from the International Composers Competition of the Budapest Spring Festival, Aliènor harpsichord Composition Competition, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Ken-neth Davenport Competition for Orchestral Works, as well as commissions from the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle and Milwaukee, National Symphony Or-chestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orquesta de Castilla y León (Barcelona), Library of Congress, Kronos Quartet, Radio France, National Endowment for the Arts, Juilliard School and Casals Festival.

Concerning his creative style, Sierra says that he seeks to incorporate into his compositions “elements of folklore and of popular music (urban folklore) in order to create a music that in es-sence is Puerto Rican, and portrays the marvelous and contradictory world of that tropical island.” Though his idiom is different, he follows a path earlier traveled by Bartók, Chávez, Ginastera, Copland and other 20th-century nationalist composers by distilling the characteristic components of his native music and fusing the result with the forms and gestures of traditional concert music. “Instead of preserving intact the devices and techniques of Caribbean and Latin American folk music,” wrote Donald Thompson, “Sierra, with a surgeon’s touch, extracts their essential features, then deftly incorporates these into a new conception of concert music. In other words, Sierra’s ‘roots’ are definitely present, but more in essence than in substance.”

The fandango, a folk dance in moderately fast triple meter that originated in Spain in the early 18th century, is traditionally danced by couples with castanets accompanied by guitars. Sierra writes of his Fandangos, “The keyboard Fandango of Antonio Soler [1729-1783] has always fascinated me for its strange and whimsical twists and turns. My Fandangos is a fantasy, or a ‘super-fandango,’ that takes as its point of departure Soler’s work and incorporates elements of Boccherini’s Fandango [1798] and my own Baroque musings. Some of the oddities in the harmonic structure of the Soler piece provided a bridge for the incorporation of contemporary sonorities, opening windows to ap-parently alien sound worlds. In these parenthetical commentaries, the same materials heard before are transformed, as one would look at the same objects through different types of lenses or prisms. The continuous-variation form over an ostinato bass gave me the chance to use complex orchestra-tion techniques as another element for variation.”




BOssa nOVa (2009)Choreographed by eduardo vilaroAdditional Choreography by michelle manzanales and ricardo J. garciaCostume Design by Diana ruettigersai dessa (Nathan marques & Ana terra)trOCandO em miúdOs (Francis hime & Chico Buarque)COrCOVadO (Antonio Carlos Jobim)ChOrinhO pra ele (hermeto pascoal)

This set reflects the diversity found in the popular music of Brazil of the last century. The opener, Sai Dessa, a samba by Nathan Marques, one of Brazil’s foremost guitarists, is a dream of a better Brazil — a fairer place for its citizens, with no crime, no violence, and more equality — writ-ten with a great deal of wit and humor. The composers of Trocando em Miúdos, Francis hime and Chico Buarque, are two of Brazil’s most sophisticated composers. Francis’ beautifully developed melody and harmony is complimented by the unparalleled poetry of Buarque, on a song of deep heartbreak. Corcovado is one of the most popular songs by Brazil’s most influential composer, Anto-nio Carlos Jobim. A love song using the city of Rio de Janeiro as a backdrop, Corcovado (the statue of Christ, the Redemptor) is seen through the window of an apartment, as if it is blessing this love. Chorinho Pra Ele closes the set. A style of music from the 1940s, choro is a contemporary to samba, with a distinctive harmonic color, and primarily instrumental. This composition by hermeto Pas-coal, one of the most creative and idiosyncratic Brazilian composers of our time, is a great example of his prismatic view of this rich Brazilian tradition.

The creation of Bossa Nova was made possible by a generous gift from June Bild Pinsof.

— Luciana Souza


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