Jazz & Blues Festival plays well with fans
By B. K. Lake, photos by Glenna Cornett, Dec 1, 2006

If music fans didn’t get their fill during the Festival Internacional de Jazz & Blues, they weren’t trying.

The festival and its ripple effects offered at least 20 occasions to hear some 25 musicians from the United States, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile and Mexico. There were five concerts, three workshops, at least five jam sessions and numerous restaurants and bars featuring one or more musicians during the four-day festival that closed Sunday.

“People liked what we offered,” said festival director Antonio Lozoya, who revived the traditional Thanksgiving weekend event that ran 11 years before taking a break in 2005. “There was broad participation by the public for the first time. The festival achieved its main purpose of blending all parts of the community—musicians, volunteers, fans and our sponsors.”

Lozoya, who was music director of the former festival, said the event “tried to present a varied program to appeal to all tastes by including traditional, straight-ahead and Latin jazz and the blues.” One indicator of the response, he added, was the standing-room-only crowd that filled the Plaza Cívica for a public concert Sunday.

The festival added blues to its previous jazz-only format, Lozoya said, “because music that doesn’t have elements of the blues isn’t jazz.”

As it turned out, some of the best-received programs featured two blues singers, Betsy Pecanins of Mexico and Denise Perrier of San Francisco, and a local group, Bob & Joe’s Blues Show. 

Pecanins, who was born in Yuma, Arizona, has recorded 14 CDs featuring her unique blend of blues and ranchera. She worked so closely with her three musicians, a cellist and two guitarists, that at times it seemed as if they were one voice. The audience responded with a standing ovation.

Perrier closed the festival to cheers for the show that she and the Mo’ Ritmo group presented. Perrier could have been singing the blues in Memphis when she belted out the Bessie Smith hit, “I’ve Got What It Takes (But It Breaks My Hear to Give It Away).” Perrier was at ease from the start with the audience and with the musicians, with whom she was appearing for the first time.

She also teamed up smoothly with two other singers, Abe Zimmerman, resplendent in a tuxedo, and Pamela Pena, a sultry slide trombonist from Venezuela. 

One of the numbers could top the risqué charts with its double entendres reinforced by Pena’s trombone gestures. In her dancing Thursday night while appearing with drummer Cody Moffett and Jambalaya, Pena displayed the best-looking legs of any trombonist one writer had ever seen on stage.

Bob & Joe’s Blues Show, Robert Kaplan and Joe Warner, ran the gamut from the most-recorded blues song of all times, W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” to the more recent “The San Miguel Blues.” Warner introduced the latter with a crowd-pleasing quip: “The absolute only thing that describes the blues in San Miguel is a single woman without a dog.”

Jazz fans also responded well to an eclectic mix, including singer Magos Herrera of Mexico; three university jazz professors from the US, pianist Steve Anderson, bassist Craig Butterfield and percussionist Rodrigo Villanueva; pianist Gabriel Hernández and percussionist Roberto Vizcaíno from Cuba; local favorites the San Miguel Jazzcats, with bassist Lozoya, guitarist Ken Basman and drummer Victor Monterubbia; and Doug Robinson’s Mo’ Ritmo group.

Chamber concerts range from Mozart sonatas to the tango 

Pro Musica Concerts, Adrian Justus & Mauricio Nader

Monday & Tuesday, December 4 and 5, 5pm

St. Paul’s Church, Cardo 6, 50/150 pesos

The Pro Musica concerts on December 4 and 5 are noteworthy both for the number of works to be played—14 over two nights—and the range of composers. The all-time greats will be represented, as well as famous composers not usually played in chamber music concerts and some highly regarded ones who are not as well known. The eclectic programs will be performed by two international artists, violinist Adrian Justus and pianist Mauricio Nader, both born in Mexico. 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in E Minor will be performed the first night, as will Camille Saint Saëns’s “Rondo Capriccioso.” The program also will include works by two of the best-known Spanish composers, Manuel de Falla and Enrique Granados.

In the Fritz Kreisler variation of de Falla’s “Fire Dance Ritual” from his 1915 ballet El Amor Brujo, the image of Spain comes through in de Falla’s evocation of guitar qualities. He also employed flamenco dance rhythms and melodic patterns of the passionate and melancholic type of song known as the cante hondo in the Kreisler variation from the two-act opera La Vida Breve. 

A composer and pianist, Granados contributed significantly to the creation of a national Spanish music. Among the works he is best remembered for are his Spanish dances, including the “Danza Andaluza,” as interpreted by Kreisler. 

Sure to delight the Saturday audience is the inclusion of the tango “Bordel” by the Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla, who revolutionized the traditional tango by incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. 

Also on the Saturday program are the works of three composers perhaps not played enough. Jean-Marie Leclair, a French composer of the 18th century, is known chiefly for his sonatas, such as the Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Major. Eugene Ysaye, who died in 1931, was the most famous violinist of his generation, especially in the French-speaking world, and also is remembered for his sonatas in the post-romantic style, including the Sonata for Violin Solo No. 2. Ricardo Castro, born in Mexico in 1907, lived only 39 years but is considered one of Mexico’s outstanding musicians and composers, whose works include the “Vals-Capricio for Piano Solo.” 

Sunday’s program consists of works by four big names: J. S. Bach’s Partita in E Major for Violin; Mozart’s Sonata for Piano in F Major, a Ludwig von Beethoven sonata, and Pablo Sarasate’s “Gypsy Airs.” The fifth composer is Swiss-born Ernest Bloch, who was noted for the highly individual style of his orchestral and chamber music. Bloch, who died in 1959, composed many works with clearly religious overtones, including “Three Pictures of Hassidic Life.”

Tickets at 50 and 150 pesos are available at Casa de Papel, Mesones 57; La Conexión, Aldama 3; the Sierra Nevada Hotel, Hospicio 46; and at the St. Paul’s church office, weekdays between 11am and 2pm. Tickets may be reserved by calling 152-0387 during those hours or purchased at the door one hour before concert time.

Gil & Cartas in concert 

Concert, Gil & Cartas Wednesday, December 13, 7pm Teatro Ángela Peralta, Hernández Macías & Mesones 150, 100 & 50 pesos

The much-loved local musical duo of Gil & Cartas present a concert in San Miguel de Allende. The two have been performing together for more than 15 years and the music made by this collaboration is not to be missed. Gil Gutierrez (guitar) and Pedro Cartas (violin) are accompanied by Alex Gutierrez on the bass and the classical string quartet from the Querétaro Philharmonic.

Tickets are available at La Zandunga, Hernández Macías 129, or at the Angela Peralta ticket office at the corner of Hernández Macías and Mesones.