La música continúa escuchandose, Concierto Gitano, Pro Musica ends by threes and twos, New administrative director at chamber music festival

San Miguel es conocido como un imán para aquellos involucrados en las artes. Solo un breve recorrido a través de este periódico y encontrarán listas de exposiciones, galerías, clases, conciertos, y eventos. Sin embargo, si se fijan detenidamente, notarán que la mayoría de los conciertos de música clásica que tienen lugar aquí, son de ejecutantes y grupos de otras ciudades o países traídos aquí por asociaciones locales como Pro Música o los muchos conciertos del Festival de Cámara. Muy pocos saben que hay un pequeño grupo de músicos talentosos viviendo y actuando en San Miguel. El Ensamble San Miguel, es un grupo de música de cámara con músicos locales y otros "importados", pero todos residentes en este momento de San Miguel. El ensamble, está compuesto de piano, cello, oboe, flauta, bajo, tenor y soprano. Ellos tocan semanalmente en bodas y eventos especiales organizados en San Miguel. El grupo está planeando ahora un recital de duetos y tríos con cinco miembros del grupo.

Los cinco músicos locales tienen un amplio currículo y experiencia, pero todos han decidido establecerse en San Miguel. Xavier Hernández, tenor, nació y creció en San Miguel, pero realizó sus estudios en la ciudad de México donde conoció y se casó con Liliana Gutiérrez, pianista. Liliana es originaria del estado de México, llevó a cabo sus estudios en la ciudad de México, y vino a San Miguel con Xavier, donde ellos formaron una familia. Xavier dirige el coro comunitario de San Miguel, llamado Voces Unidas, donde Liliana es la pianista acompañante. Los dos también dan clases particulares en sus respectivos instrumentos. Clara Dunham, soprano, originaria de Maine, USA, fue aceptada para participar en el prestigioso Tanglewood Music Festival, e hizo también estudios internacionales de voz y musicología en la Sorbonne en Francia. Se mudó hace cinco años a San Miguel, donde actúa regularmente como solista y con el ensamble. Enrique Prado, guanajuatense de nacimiento, y residente de San Miguel, se mudó aquí a la edad de 11 años, y comenzó por ese tiempo sus estudios de piano en el centro cultural "El Nigromante". A poco tiempo de comenzados sus estudios, fue catalogado como niño prodigio y contó desde el principio con la admiración y el apoyo de la comunidad sanmiguelense. Dejó San Miguel para estudiar música con especialización en piano en Texas y posteriormente en la ciudad de Holguín, Cuba. Enrique ha regresado a San Miguel donde ahora da clases de piano y cello, y tiene actuaciones frecuentemente. Carly Cross, oboísta y originaria de Estados Unidos, rea-lizó parte de su formación en Interlochen Arts Academy, y continuó sus estudios en McGill University en Montreal. Además, dedica su tiempo a otras actividades de negocios y académicas. Se mudó a San Miguel hace 4 años y medio donde inició MexArt, un campamento para adolescentes donde estudian español. Ahora también dirige Casa Crayola, un pequeño hotel, donde la música flota en los jardines durante los ensayos del ensamble.

El viernes 31 de marzo, el ensamble San Miguel presentará su concierto"Músicos de San Miguel en Concierto" a las 7 de la tarde en la Iglesia de San Pablo. En esta ocasión, el grupo presentará diferentes obras de música de cámara en diferentes combinaciones instrumentales, tales como oboe y piano, voz y piano, dos voces y piano, cuatro manos, y finalmente un arreglo especial que incluye a todos los músicos. Las obras que serán ejecutadas son de compositores como Schumann, Guastavino, Mabarak, Beethoven, Fauré, y Dvorak. Este concierto es una excelente oportunidad para locales y visitantes de escuchar música interpretada por músicos residentes de San Miguel.

Concierto de Cámara
Ensamble San Miguel
viernes 31 de marzo, 7pm
Iglesia de San Pablo, Cardo 6
100 pesos

The emotionally charged musical duo Gil & Cartas are teaming up with Shelley MacLeod, a former world champion ice dancer turned singer/songwriter, to perform songs from their new CD. The collaboration began one night last April at Finnegan's Pub. MacLeod, on vacation in San Miguel from Connecticut, went to hear Gil & Cartas. Their violin, bass and guitar roused the sleeping gypsy in her soul.

After that emotional April night, the duo listened to her first CD, recorded two years earlier. It was a match. They decided to produce a CD together.

"They were playing the music that I've always heard in my head," says former gold-medal champion MacLeod. "Hearing it was like skating in the dark, leaping into space, then landing with grace. It was 'love at first hearing,' you could say."

An ice-dancing champion from ages 15 to 35, MacLeod was born in Porcupine, Ontario, the grandchild of gypsies. After a whirlwind decade of skating in the major cities of France, Germany, Spain and Japan, she settled in Weston, Connecticut. At age 40, she had a son, Cameron.

MacLeod's story answers the questions: "What happens when you're creatively successful at an early age, and suddenly you're in mid-life, retired from your former career? Is there still creativity left?" When Cameron went off to school, MacLeod found herself sitting down at the second-hand piano she'd bought for her son's Suzuki lessons.

"I know what a song feels like," says MacLeod, who had always loved interpreting the music when she skated. But she'd never taken a music lesson, could not read notation and never thought of herself as a singer.

She was amazed when she began playing entire pieces, with little trouble, all by ear. Within a few days, she was writing new compositions, both music and lyrics. Within two years, she had 200 new pieces, ranging in style from bossa nova to blues to rap.

Her mother asked her why she was surprised at her new-found musical talent, considering that her ancestors were gypsies and that music and dance should be as natural as breathing to her.

Apparently, her creativity was as verdant as always and was ripe for a new path of expression.

Enter Gil & Cartas, whose music is a blend of flamenco, Cuban son, bluegrass, gypsy jazz and classical. Soon after their first appearance at Finnegan's Pub in January 2005, they recorded their debut album. A formidable team, Oaxacan-born Gil Gutiérrez composed and performed some of the music for the film Frida, and Cuban-born Pedro Cartas spent eight years as first-chair violinist with Cuba's National Symphony Orchestra.

Their histories are as colorful as MacLeod's. Gutiérrez, a maestro of the nylon string guitar, has performed and taught all over the world, from UCLA to Spain and South America. Twenty years ago, Cartas was sent to Mexico City on a work/study fellowship and asked to immigrate and become a Mexican citizen.

When authorities said that his papers "were not right," he was tossed in jail and had to sell thousands of dollars' worth of violins to pay the Mexican lawyers to get him out.

MacLeod moved into her friend Toller Cranston's Parque Juárez complex. Cranston himself is a three-time world champion gold medalist in free skating, and he has been a friend of MacLeod's for over 30 years. Cranston has a lot to say about his friend's bold, fresh new work.

"I very much sense that this will be a splendid evening," says Cranston. Something wonderful and original is in the air, he feels. "I'd say it would be an evening not to miss." He means it. He's flying back a day early from a major Toronto showing of his paintings just to be in San Miguel for the concert.

Cranston describes the first time he heard MacLeod's CD: "I didn't know what I thought. I knew that it was something, but I wasn't sure what." He compares her music to the art of Dubuffet, the revered 20th-century artist who rebelled against conformity and created works of rare, raw expression.

"The minute you hear Shelley's voice, you know you're onto something unique," agrees Paul Voudouris of Hit Records Sound Studio near El Cortijo. "It's smoky and seductive. Like listening to the ghost of Bette Davis, maybe."

MacLeod and Gil & Cartas are recording their CD in Voudouris's studio. "Collaborating with Shelley is exciting," says Gil. "We have a lot of compatibility with her." Indeed, her smoky delivery matches perfectly with their heart-aching strings.

It will be a memorable evening. Local filmmaker Carlos Pascual will be there to film the concert. A producer from New York City, Kenneth Higney from ARC Music Group, is flying down to get a take on the new collaboration. At the time of writing only 40 tickets are still available, so the concert is already on its way to selling out. Villa Jacaranda is considering offering a repeat concert in a few weeks if there's a demand.

Advance tickets can be purchased at the Villa Jacarada hotel office. If they are available, tickets will also be sold at the door.

"I want to say that our lives count," muses MacLeod, whose slow, haunting lyrics often spiral down to an insight, a glimmer of hope and reassurance. In a piece called "Don't Worry," we can imagine a mother singing to her child with a sweet melody and reassuring words: "Everything will be all right. Everything is OK." She moves from lullaby to tango, from blues to bossa nova, from jazz to ballads, all with the feel of an intimate, foggy streetlamp serenade.

In another song, called "River," MacLeod laments: "River take me home … my work is done." Yet no one who hears the "Shades of a Gypsy" concert will believe for one minute that her work is done. It has just begun.

Concierto Gitano
Con Shelly MacLeod y Gil & Cartas
martes 28 de marzo, 7-8pm
Teatro de Villa Jacaranda
200 pesos

The Pro Musica series concludes with two concerts, a trio and a duo. The Musica Viva trio and the Emerald Duo of San Jose, California, will be making their first appearances in the Pro Musica concerts, but one of the principals is no stranger here. Violist Claudia Shiuh, who has been visiting San Miguel for 30 years, will perform April 8 with Musica Viva, when she will be joined by Susan Duering, violin, and Dieter Wulfhurst, violoncello.

Duering and Wulfhurst, who also are married, will perform April 9 as the Emerald Duo.

Wulfhurst will play a cello made in 1693 by Giovanni Baptista Rogeri of Brescia, one of the famous centers of violin and cello making in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. He is co-director of the string orchestra of California State University, Fresno.

At age 15, Shiuh became the youngest member of the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra. She has appeared on television with the Fresno Philharmonic String Quartet and is principal violist of the Fresno Philharmonic.

Duering has performed through the Americas, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. Her television and radio broadcasts include performances on National Public Radio and satellite broadcasts from China. As a member of the Emerald Duo, she toured Germany three times, where reviews praised "her fascinating playing," "serenity in style" and "overhelming musicality.

" She is a member of the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra and performs regularly with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra and is acting principal second with the Fresno Philharmonic this season. She also is a board-certified music therapist.

Tickets are available at Galeria San Miguel, next to the Presidencia; Casa de Papel, Mesones 57; at St. Paul's, Cardo 6; and at the Chamber Music Festival office in Bellas Artes weekdays 11am to 2pm. Tickets may be reserved by calling 152-0387 weekdays, from 11am to 2pm, and are on sale at the door one hour before the concert.

For more information, see the website at

http://promusicasma.tripod.com

Pro Musica Concert series
Musica Viva trio
Saturday, April 8, 5pm
Emerald Duo
Sunday, April 9, 5pm
St. Paul's Church, Cardo 6
50/100/150 pesos

The Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende-which will present its 28th annual two-week season of concerts from July 29 to August 12, 2006-has hired Silvia Grosso as its new administrative director.

Grosso has extensive experience in producing and promoting music festivals and concerts in her native Argentina.

She also worked in publicity and record promotion, touring Latin America with Los Enanitos Verdes, a popular Argentine rock group, and in radio and television production in Argentina and the United States.

"On that tour I fell in love with Mexico," Grosso says, "so when I had a chance to come back I moved here for good." In San Miguel de Allende, Grosso has been project coordinator for FAI (Fundación de Apoyo Infantil, Save the Children) and also worked as director of Centro Cultural El Recreo.

"Most of all, I've always loved the work I did in the musical field," she adds. "When this opportunity came up to work for the Festival and get involved with music again, it was the answer to my dreams."

As administrative director, Grosso will be responsible for day-to-day management and coordination of all Festival activities. She will be assisted by Martín Gregorio Reyna, who has worked in the Festival office for several years and has extensive experience in administration and graphic design.

The Festival de Música de Cámara, A.C., is run by a nine-member board headed by president Edward Clancy Contreras. Other officers are Barbara Bladen Porter and George Bell, vice presidents; Kendal Dodge Butler, secretary; Michael Stone, treasurer; and Susan Bloom, Ruth Friedman, Jim Helsing and Hugo Laborice, vocales (members-at-large). Bellas Artes director Francisco Vidargas serves as an ex officio member.

"All of us on the festival board are excited to have Silvia working with us," says president Ed Clancy. "She brings a wealth of experience and tremendous enthusiasm to the position. With Silvia on our team, we know this is going to be the best Chamber Music Festival San Miguel has ever seen."