Moorish Music, Modern Technology
By Keith Wall, June 22, 2007

Concert Jaramar Fri & Sat, June 29 & 30, 9pm El Viejo-Topo Café Plaza Pueblito Stirling Dickinson 28 154-8701

Jaramar is a well-known Mexican singer whose work is composed of elements from the past and present. She uses musical forms that evolved many centuries ago and in this project is looking for present-day ears more familiar with a different type of sound. It is a way of reaching back to old languages to find a link with the present. It is an effort to unite contemporary technology with the purity of tradition.

Jaramar’s music also attempts to break geographical barriers with a journey that begins in the Spain of Moors, Jews and Christians, passes through the brutal encounter with a “new world,” through the colonial domination, and finally reaches the inevitable crossbreeding or mestizaje where all the elements blend. This musical crossbreeding in Jaramar’s work is also a personal quest through which she and her musicians strive to find an original expressive language that reflects the different roads travelled by each of them.

Jaramar began her music studies at the age of ten, and has been part of several ensembles, among them Escalón and Ars Antiqua. She recorded Hermano de la Muerte, Escalón, Canciones y Danzas de la Edad Media y el Renacimiento and Tempus est Iocundum with these groups.

In 1992, she started her work as a solo artist with projects including, Entre la pena y el gozo (1993), Fingir que duermo (1995), Si yo nunca muriera (1996), Lenguas (1998), A flor de tierra (1999), Nadie creerá el incendio (2002), Travesía (2002), Duerme por la noche oscura (2004) and Que mis labios te nombren (2006).

Jaramar has been awarded scholarships by the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts.

Her search came from a personal need. It also started from a desire to take some of the songs that she most likes to sing, old Sephardic chants and Spanish renaissance songs, and transform them to bring them closer to our time. She also wanted to try to enrich their sound by incorporating electronic elements.

She isn’t particularly interested in following strict rules or in being too faithful to a rigid view of the aesthetics of the past. After having worked with musicians who have a more academic approach to ancient music, she finds herself more interested in recreating it with a more contemporary spirit. Modern technology plays a very important role in this effort. The musicians she works with also enjoy the process of transforming and playing around with this music.

If asked, she would say she is not so sure there is a “correct” or “incorrect” approach to ancient music. For Jaramar, as a singer, what is most important is to feel comfortable singing what she sings; to know that she has made this music herself.

She is currently experimenting with Mexican music trying fresh ideas, mixing things up without limitations or restrictions.. “There has to be a certain amount of method and direction, of course, but there is also a great deal of freedom to experiment, to mix and even to play,”she says. 

Jaramar’s music sounds like many things. It is basically a search in many directions and also a road of discovery through the songs she has found—songs of great beauty and vitality even though some were written hundreds of years ago. 

She shares this path with her audience, with musicians and artists of other disciplines and believes it is not only about a voice, her voice, but a sound that shows the colors of those who have joined her on this musical journey.







Student Musician Program, not Child’s Play
By Barbara Porter

The 25 young people who are coming to play in San Miguel de Allende on July 28 won’t be found at the soccer field or in a video game arcade. They’ll be here to play, but their playing field will be the Angela Peralta Theater, the Belles Artes auditorium, the Santa Ana Theater at the Biblioteca, the kiosk in the Jardín.

Instruments in hand, these young aspiring musicians will be here as participants in the 29th annual Festival de Música de Camara de San Miguel de Allende. They are young, pre-professionals who have been selected for a two-week intense scholarship program that could transform their chances as professional musicians.

The Student Program has always been a key element of the Chamber Music Festival and its goal is to provide a high level of master classes to aspiring music students, a rare opportunity in Mexico. And so, the students will take individual and group master classes with the Quartet-in-Residence, the La Catrina String Quartet and the other well-known groups performing during the Festival. Imagine an opportunity to study with the likes of the Imani Winds quintet, the Rossetti, Turtle Island, Cassat, Brentano, and Cypress String Quartets! During the annual summer festival (this year July 28-August 11) these young musicians will practice hours a day, both alone and with their group, with daily guidance and assessment from the professionals.

They will perform in public, sometimes in the Biblioteca, other times in the kiosk in the Jardín, and once in a while they will just happen to show up wherever you’re having coffee. The students (usually in their 20s and early 30s) will give a concert in the local families’ homes that are volunteering to house these students during their two-week stay. Many of the hosts housing the students eagerly await our summer student program, knowing it gives them an opportunity to listen to them practice, get to know the students who come from all over Mexico and to enjoy the students as if part of their extended family.

And this year, they will work one-on-one with an experienced Feldenkrais teacher, who will instruct them on their physical development, adjustments to posture while performing, and how to avoid the possibility of stress to their body. There are few Feldenkrais instructors in Mexico, so this is an unusual opportunity. It will be an important addition to our student program.

In the evening, these young musicians will go to the Chamber concerts, all of them, and observe what professional musicians do, night in and night out. They will also turn the tables on their professional instructors, and give special performances for local SMA children, becoming “master teachers” in their own right.

With so much individual attention, you might think the Student Program is expensive, and you are right. Please help support it through your contributions designated for our Student Program, which can be made at the Festival office at Belles Artes, 75 Hernández Macías (154-5141). Purchasing season tickets is another way to help us continue our student program. Season tickets for 11 concerts are US$240 (2,640 pesos) for orchestra and US $315 (3,500 pesos) for box seats. Individual tickets go on sale July 2. We are also offering a package of three special concerts this year in wonderful locations in and around San Miguel. The locations are not yet final, but one will be in the Sanctuary at Atotonilco, the UNESCO World Monuments Site. The concerts are 250 pesos each, with a 20 percent discount if you buy all three or if you are a season ticket holder.

If you have an extra bedroom[s] and separate bath in or near Centro, please let us know if you would like to volunteer housing for one or more of our students. Email c2mciver@yahoo.com  or leave your contact information at the Chamber Music Festival office in Belles Artes.







Boston’s Children’s Chorus gives free concert in SMA


Concert
Boston Children’s Chorus and ANYÉL
Thurs, June 28, 6pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Corner Mesones & Hernández Macías
Free

The children’s chorus of Boston joins ANYÉL—a music program serving hundreds of children in San Miguel—in presenting a free concert on Thursday, June 28 at 6pm in the Angela Peralta Theater. The mission of the chorus is “to maximize the power of music to create social change.” The mission of ANYÉL is “to help the children of San Miguel create a better future through music.”

Founded in 2004, the Boston Children’s Chorus is a multiracial, multicultural arts organization that brings together a diverse group of children in grades 2-12 from many neighborhoods in the surrounding area. They will be singing from their unique repertoire which includes classical, folk and world music and spirituals. Although they perform locally in the Boston area, they also tour the world, believing that “the future of the arts is ensured by keeping music alive in the minds and hearts of our youth and communities.”

The hope is that this event, and others, will bring attention to our ongoing effort to form the San Miguel Children’s Chorus; to help this community learn about the value of such an opportunity; that parents and community members will come to appreciate and support the commitment necessary to create a strong, functional musical organization for our youth. This is provided by ANYÉL, free of charge to all San Miguel children, with the help of the Department of Education and Culture and the Biblioteca Pública…and much more support is needed!

On Friday, June 29, the visiting chorus members from Boston will get together with children from the ANYÉL program, including the girls and boys from the orphanages, Casa Hogar Santa Julia and Casa Hogar Mexiquitos. They will meet, eat, play and sing

at a comida/workshop event in the patio of the library, beginning at 2pm.

After enjoying the inspiring concert the evening before, now is your chance to give more support to this wonderful opportunity for our children: a delicious, healthy, homemade comida will be served to 120 children and adult helpers—and we need financial help to buy the food. Boxes saying “Comida for Boston/San Miguel Children” will be at the front desk of the library, the counter in the Santa Ana Café (library) and at Casa de Papel, Mesones & Reloj. Please put your donation of any amount into a box. ANYÉL will buy the food, prepare it and serve it. If you’d like to volunteer to help with preparation and/or serving, put your name and contact info in the box also, or call Juanita at 152-8188. Visitors are welcome to watch the workshop for the children at 4 PM. 

Together, we can make this a positively unforgettable happening that will create a new consciousness in San Miguel about the value of music in the lives of all our children!










Alcantara leads new generation of guitarrists 

Concert José Manuel Alcántara Wed, June 27, 7pm Teatro Santa Ana Biblioteca Pública Reloj 50 A 100 pesos

José Manuel Alcántara holds his sixth Classical guitar concert here in San Miguel on June 27. After living and studying in Europe for five years, he has started a series of contemporary Latin-American music projects. In this concert he combines the classical guitar world with this new fresh approach. He is part of the Sweelinck’s Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Ensemble which recently participated in the Gaudeamus International week in the Stedelijk Museum, New Zealand’s Music Festival in Ijsbreker and the Berlin Musical Festival, organized by the Goethe Institute of Amsterdam.

Alcántara is currently leading the new “Guitar Movement” in Querétaro, a project intended as an open forum for the new generation of guitarists in this city. His last concert in Teatro Santa Ana was a great success, so be prepared and buy your tickets in advance. 









Viva Musica returns for Chamber Concert Series 
By B. K. Lake

Concerts Viva Musica Sat, June 30, 5pm Sun, July 1, 5pm St. Paul’s Church Cardo 6 150/50 pesos

The Pro Musica concert series presents a performance on June 30 and July 1 with the return of Viva Musica, which debuted here last year.

Viva Musica will be appearing as a quartet: Susan Doering, violin; Claudia Shiuh, viola; Dieter Wulfhorst, violoncello and joining them this year will be Stephen Thomas on piano.

Their June 30 program features compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his father, Leopold Mozart, and his son, Franz Xavier Wolfgang Mozart. On July 1, they will present a program, “Romance in C,” with works in C minor by Dmitri Shostakovich, Johannes Brahms and Julius Zellner.

Violinist Susan Doering has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East as a soloist, recitalist and orchestral and chamber musician. Her television and public radio broadcasts include featured performances on NPR’s “Performance Today” and satellite broadcasts from China. Her numerous CD recordings include works by Stephen Danker and chamber music by Ernest Bloch.

Claudia Shiuh, violist, received her musical training in Texas and California, attending California State University Fresno and the University of California, Berkeley. At age 15 she became the youngest member of the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra. She has performed extensively as a chamber musician throughout the US and has been a guest artist at the Tehachapi Beethoven Festival, the Fresno-based Hauskonzert and Fresno Art Museum series, and with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. 

Wulfhorst has performed in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia and Australia as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral performer. He has played in the orchestras of Hannover, Göttingen, and Hildesheim, and has been interim principal cellist with the Fresno Philharmonic. 

Thomas has performed through the US, Canada, Scandinavia and Japan. Upcoming performance plans for next season include tours of Romania and China. He has recorded performances for television and radio broadcasts and his most recent recording, which includes works by Haydn, Brahms, and South American composers, will be released in the fall.

Both concerts begin at 5pm at St Paul’s Church, Calle Cardo 6. Tickets at 150 and 50 pesos are available at La Tienda in the Biblioteca, Insurgentes 25; Casa de Papel, Mesones 57, St. Paul’s office weekdays 11 to 2; and at the door one hour before concert time. For details see www.promusica.com. Watch for our other offerings in the upcoming Summer Concert Series.








“Matanga” to perform Thursday,
June 28 at 7:30, Teatro Santa Ana 

Tickets 150 pesos, limited seating

The “Matanga” musical group was founded in Xalapa, Veracruz towards the end of the 80’s. Since they started, one of their goals was to rescue, promote, preserve and innovate the classical-ethnic “Son Jarocho” .

They adhere to the “Son” tradition, which has been recorded in the famous “Encuentros de Jaraneros de Tlacotalpan”, the mecca of music. “Matanga” has always innovated new rhythms and incorporated new instruments like the Djembe from Africa. The group has participated in a number of festivals all over México and the Carribbean and they have held workshops in New York, Paris, Marseille, Barcelona and the Palmas, in Gran Canaria. Honorio Robledo, lead musician has founded the “Encuentro de Jaraneros” in Los Angeles, California, which has become a very important platform for the “Soneros” in the United States. 

Don’t miss this wonderful concert by “Matanga.”