Ensemble Connect turns up the heat with an exciting program of contemporary Latin American music

United StatesUnited States Ecos: Music of Latinoamérica: Ensemble Connect, Gabriela Ortiz (artistic partner), Martirene Alcántara (visual artist), Leonardo Pineda (conductor). Carnegie Hall, New York, 27.1.2025. (RP)

Gabriela Ortiz © Chris Lee

Gabriela Ortiz – Pigmentum
Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez – Luciérnagas
Ricardo Lorenz – ‘La Hamaca’ from La Hamaca
Ileana Perez VelazquezLight echoes
Alejandro Cardona – Axolotl
Carolina Noguera – Gritos de fuego, patrias de papel

Every Ensemble Connect concert is a remarkable musical experience, but Ecos: Music of Latinoamérica was electrifying. The concert was part of Carnegie Hall’s Up Close series, in which an internationally renowned artist curates a program that expands the traditional boundaries of the concert repertoire and format. Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, Carnegie Hall’s 2024–2025 Debs Composer’s Chair, whom Gustavo Dudamel has called ‘one of the most talented composers in the world’, filled the role brilliantly.

For Ecos: Music of Latinoamérica, Ortiz selected pieces by five composers from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia. All but one were in New York to coach the players and to introduce their pieces at the concert. One cannot shoehorn such distinct musical voices into anything approaching a Latin American school. Vibrant colors, exciting rhythms and a myriad of emotions, however, were the factors that united these fascinating works inspired by history, nature and literature.

Born into a musical family, Ortiz incorporates distinct sonic worlds that range from traditional and popular to avant-garde techniques into her works. She often employs multimedia, as she did in Pigmentum for horn and piano, which was performed by hornist Ryan Dresen and pianist Chelsea Wang. Its four movements are named for the naturally occurring blue colors, which Ortiz depicted in wordless songs accompanied by Martirene Alcántara’s video imagery. It was a captivatingly beautiful and exotic musical, as well as visual, experience.

Ryan Dresen (horn) and Chelsea Wang (piano) perform Gabriela Ortiz’s Pigmentum © Chris Lee

Carlos Sánchez-Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico City, strives for lightness, speed, visibility, exactness and multiplicity in his music. These qualities are epitomized in Luciérnagas in which he replicated through music thousands of fireflies flickering in the evening light. The reference point for the piece was the killing of nearly 1,000 peasants in El Salvador in December 1981 by militiamen at El Mozote. Sanchez-Gutierrez’s inspiration, however, came from the natural phenomenon observed by visitors to the site years after the tragedy.

Luciérnagas is scored for clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello. The players created a musical picture buzzing with ever-changing rhythms, textures and colors. Those sounds could be annoying, such as violinist Mari Lee’s replication of a mosquito that keeps you from sleeping; or dark and ominous, as produced by Yasmina Spiegelberg on the bass clarinet. Others, however, were brilliant, such as Oliver Xu’s marimba solo.

Venezuelan-born Ricardo Lorenz’s music often addresses global societal challenges that concern him. His piano trio, La Hamaca, however, is pure nostalgia in which he summons memories of hammocks from his childhood, an experience shared across all strata of Venezuelan society.

In ‘La Hamaca’, the work’s first movement, Lorenz introduces the many activities enjoyed in a hammock – cuddling, frolicking, romancing, reflecting, sleeping, arguing – through melody and a sparkling array of colors. It ends simply and quietly, invoking a wonderful sense of comfort, equaled only by the sensation of resting in a hammock on a warm summer day. Pianist Chelsea Wang, violinist Mari Lee and cellist Thapelo Masitamade made each feeling and activity real in their witty and detailed performance.

Cuban-American composer Ileana Perez Velazquez was inspired to compose Light echoes by the V838 Monocerotis, which was the brightest star in our galaxy for a brief time in January 2002. The title refers to the phenomenon in which rings of interstellar dust surround the star and reflect light from the flash. In Light echoes, Velazquez creates outbursts of sound that provide structure as well as the contrast between the brilliance of light and the darkness of outer space. Joanne Kang is a superb pianist, but Xu was outstanding in a performance that combined athleticism, coordination and graceful playing in an amazing battery of percussion instruments.

Like Ortiz, Costa Rican composer and guitarist Alejandro Cardona comes from an artistic, musical and literary family. Although his education was international, he has lived mostly in Mexico and Costa Rica. In addition to composing, Cardona is an electric guitarist, performing his mixed electroacoustic works, and the founder and musical director of the contemporary Latin American blues band, Calacas Blues.

Cardona’s Axolotl, scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, is based on a story by Julio Cortázar, an Argentine who spent most of his life in France, which begins ‘There was a time when I thought a lot about axolotls . . . Now I am an axolotl’. The axolotl is an aquatic salamander that lived, among other places, in the lakes beneath Mexico City, but in Cortázar’s story they are housed in an aquarium in Paris. The piece careens between jazz and ancient, traditional melodies and sonorities. Flutist Anjali Shinde, oboist Joseph Jordan and clarinetist Yasmina Spiegelberg were musical chameleons switching from jazz to strains evoking pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Kang united these two worlds on the piano in shimmering tones that separated the modern from the past.

The final work was the world premiere of Columbian composer Carolina Noguera’s Gritos de fuego, patrias de papel, commissioned by Carnegie Hall. The two-movement piece for chamber orchestra, whose title translates to ‘Cries of fire, paper countries’, was inspired by a story by Columbian author Juan Cárdenas. In her music, as the author did in his story, Noguera confronts the duality of a simpler life and time now governed by laws and paper. Noguera’s soundscape alternates from darkness and oppression to comfort through its beauty and warmth.

Conducted by Leonardo Pineda, it began with the bang of the drum, whose intensity and force summoned the oppression of legalism in a far less structured, natural society. Those harsh, oppressive sounds were contrasted with high, soft tones from the violin and woodwinds. Together with beautiful sounds from the piano and vibraphone, they created a luminous space reflecting a natural order of life. Gritos de fuego, patrias de papel concluded as it began, with the sound of the cello emerging from the din and fading away to nothingness.

Rick Perdian

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