Traditional Mexican & Latin American music,
Jan 26, 2007

Severo Barrera & Sergio Basurto

Monday & Tuesday, January 29 & 30, 7pm

Teatro Santa Ana, Biblioteca Pública, Reloj 50A

160 pesos

Two extraordinary musicians, Severo Barrera, who has delighted San Miguel audiences with his classical guitar, and Sergio Basurto, well known for his talents with the flamenco guitar and harp, will merge their talents to interpret joyful and sensual traditional themes of Mexican and Latin American folklore.

Severo Barrera began his career as a musician at 13 in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, where he studied for three years before attending the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City. There, he studied under renowned musician Guillermo Flores Mendez. Later, he traveled to Spain and attended the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, studying classical guitar with Maestro Demetro Ballesteros and flamenco guitar with Maestro Andrés Batista.

Barrera has recorded three CDs and is working on three more of jazz, flamenco and Latin American music. 

Basurto’s musical path started in the 1970s with his contribution as a guitarist in some of the best-known Latin American folklore groups, including Inka-Taki and La Espiga. During this period he also played the “quena” and many other Indian flutes. From there, he was invited to accompany internationally renowned artists such as Marco Antonio Muñiz, Julio Solorzano, and many others. It is from this period of his life as a musician that Basurto acquired his knowledge of and feeling for Latin American and Mexican folklore.

In the early 1990s, Basurto was invited to play guitar in Angela Cuevas’s flamenco group. After the group performed in San Miguel de Allende, Basurto moved here from Mexico City. He was quickly successful and formed his own flamenco group, now called Caña y Canela. His interest in folkloric music led him to study the harp, which he now plays as though he studied it for decades.

Basurto’s versatility and Barrera’s classicism combine to create a unique musical space that will have the audience dancing in the aisles.

So few hands, so many keys
By B. K. Lake

Pro Musica Concerts, Mauricio Nader & Santiago Piñeirúa Saturday & Sunday, , January 27 & 28, 5pm St. Paul’s Church, Cardo 6, 50/150 pesos

A title for Pro Musica’s concerts Saturday and Sunday might be “Twenty Fingers Looking for Eighty-eight Keys” as two international pianists play works for four hands as well as two.

Mauricio Nader and Santiago Piñeirúa will cover the classical landscape, from Amadeus to Schubert, and also include a less familiar name when Nader plays Mexican Rhapsody No. 1 by Gustavo Morales on Sunday.

Nader is the veteran of the two, having played more than 500 concerts in the United States, Europe and Latin America. Since graduating from the Manhattan School of Music in New York last year, Piñeirúa has appeared in Spain, the United Kingdom and the US.

Saturday’s program will include works by Franz Schubert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc. On Sunday, the two will peform pieces by Mozart, Schubert, Morales, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.

Tickets 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 from 11am to 2pm. Tickets can be reserved by calling 152-0387 during those hours and purchased at the door one hour before concert time.





Singer Shannon Day returns to San Miguel

Shannon Day

Friday, February 2 & 9, 7:30pm

Sala Quetzal, 

Biblioteca Pública, Reloj 50A

100 pesos

Live from the Sala Quetzal, Shannon Day performs two concerts in a 19th-century-salon–style soirée, accompanied by Elena Shoemaker. The first concert is devoted to musical theater greats ranging from Bernstein, Sondheim, Porter and Gershwin to new Broadway composers Andrew Lippa, and Michael John La Chiusa. In the second concert, Shannon sings songs of love, passion and romance: boleros, jazz and cabaret to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. 

Day is uniquely gifted at crossing styles and genres of music. She sang and recorded professionally with the San Francisco and Atlanta Symphony choruses and has also gigged with various jazz bands in both Florida and California. Her first professional theatrical role just happened to be her dream role, that of Eva Peron in Evita. She has performed in Brazil, Mexico, Europe, the United States and Canada. Most recently, she performed at New York City’s Birdland and The Duplex.

Day performs her one-woman show and various concerts six months out of the year in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Florida. During the other six months, she shares her talents and passion for the arts with her students. Last fall, she taught music, musical theater and private voice to over 600 students ranging in age from 5 to 19 years. Her most recent charitable concert, “Signora …Your Son Is Here,” raised US$10,000. Shannon last performed in San Miguel in a benefit concert at the Bellas Artes and as a guest performer at the Ángela Peralta Theater.

A portion of the proceeds from these concerts will benefit Double Exposure, a program that connects children from diverse cultures, specifically from San Francisco, California and San Miguel de Allende, through the universal language of photography. The program offers marginalized children the opportunity to discover themselves through the art of photography and gives them the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work. The program’s goal is to promote positive cultural exchange and appreciation of differences and to encourage self-worth via cross-cultural dialogue and creative exploration. For more ways to help, email Elizabeth Rosas at Libbyrosas@gmail.com 

Seating is limited. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Teatro Santa Ana.

Gil, Cartas & Tuey Concerts

Gil, Cartas & Tuey with Agustín Bernal

and the Querétaro String Quartet

Saturday, January 27, 7pm

Teatro Ángela Peralta

Mesones & Hernández Macías

150/100/50 pesos

The well-known duo of Gil & Cartas will be joined by Tuey Connell on January 27. The three dynamic musicians put together a CD, The Lonely Hippo, and have since performed their music in various venues in the United States, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, The Red Poppy in San Francisco and Makor in New York. 

The Lonely Hippo has been hailed as one of the most important “newgrass” CDs of 2006. The trio presented the CD two years ago at the Teatro Ángela Peralta to a sold-out house, and are back by popular demand. Joining them, on acoustic bass, is Agustín Bernal, one of the most respected bassists in Mexico. 

They will be accompanied by the Querétaro Philharmonic String Quartet.

Young singers delight Peralta audience
Guest review by John Bills, 

Audience members sprang to their feet Saturday to cheer a pair of young Mexican singers in a program of opera, operetta and zarzuela highlights, as well as Mexican vocal music. Tenor Rodrigo Garcíarroyo and soprano Enivia Mendoza spun out an evening filled with popular arias and duets chosen to appeal to both aficionados and opera novices.

Garcíarroyo possesses a strong lyric tenor and a forceful stage presence that contrasts nicely with a natural sensitivity and musicality. His voice is mellow with a rich mid-range, and he has confident, often thrilling top notes. Of the opera arias he chose, the lyrical “E lucevan le stelle” from Puccini’s Tosca seemed the most comfortable fit. “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and the ubiquitous “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot were gamely and effectively sung and secured the guaranteed audience response, but at present this is a voice that should be singing Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore (the role of his operatic debut last year), Alfredo in La Traviata and perhaps the Duke in Rigoletto, rather than such heavy fare. 

Mendoza has a large and lyrical voice that can turn dramatic when needed and impressed with her stamina and power. In music from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Rosalinda’s “Czardas” from Die Fledermaus, she displayed a fully developed soprano of great expressivity and wide range, including a sustained top-D to close the Czardas, instead of the “war whoop” that composer Johann Strauss, Jr. indicated. But she can also scale down her voice for lyric moments, as in the Silvio–Nedda love duet from I Pagliacci, where she was ably joined by guest baritone Ruben M. Luque. Only in the fioratura of the opening “Jewel Song” from Gounod’s Faust did she sound slightly sluggish. 

The vocal portions of the program were interspersed with solo piano performances of intermezzi from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, performed by the evening’s accompanist and music director, Mario Alberto Hernández. It is an impossible task to make a piano take the place of the sonorities and colors of a hundred-piece orchestra. That said, Maestro Alberto played beautifully throughout the evening’s program, supporting his young singers with a special eye to keeping the music moving ahead where more leisurely tempi would have unduly stressed their young voices. Alberto was able to show his abilities more fully with expert performances of solo piano pieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The second half of the program was on solid stylistic and vocal ground with music from Spanish zarzuelas and well-known Mexican songs. Garcíarroyo had his finest moments of the evening in “No puede ser!” from the 1936 zarzuela La Tabernera del Puerto by Basque composer Pablo Sorozabal. This romanza was given a stirring performance by Garcíarroyo. Mendoza was moving in songs by Mexican composer Jorge del Moral, and in a love duet from the zarzuela La Leyenda del Beso. Garcíarroyo and Maestro Alberto pulled out all the stops for what is perhaps the most famous song by a Mexican composer, Agustín Lara’s “Granada,” but still managed impressive lyricism, phrasing and control for the moving “Te quiero dijiste” by María Grever. The evening closed with Grever’s “Júrame,” performed as a humorous love-triangle with baritone Luque returning for the finale. The cheering audience wouldn’t let the evening end without a well-deserved encore. 

It is always a hopeful sign for the future of opera to hear such talented and promising young singers. Now that opera has come to San Miguel, one hopes it won’t be for the last time.


John Bills writes about music, wine & food, and travel. For 26 seasons he was a soloist and chorister at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City.