A local charmer
By Dick Avery April 18, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Concerts
Yoremem Jocobi
Each Wed, Thu, Sat & Sun, 8pm
Casa Payo
Zacateros 26

Ahhh, Latin love songs—nothing like ‘em! Especially when offered up by trovadora Yoremem Jocobi. She knocked ‘em out recently at The Jornada de Cultura Cubana with a killer stage presence and a great repertoire of songs, several from her popular Gracias a la Vida CD.

 Yoremem was backed by several of the fine musicians on that CD, featuring outstanding local musician, guitarist/bassist José Luis “Hopalong” Chagoyan. All of the tunes were chosen for their melodic qualities and cultural significance of other Latin countries including Spain, Argentina and Cuba.

Yoremem put on another knock-out show last weekend at Teatro Ángela Peralta that had ‘em clapping in time, standing and applauding. She was ably supported by a sextet led by Hopalong and including the terrific trumpet work of Fabian Solan, Paula Akbar on violin, Jorge Estrada on keyboards and Julian Mendieta y Angel on percussion. As a bonus, the audience was treated to several tunes given wonderfully sensitive treatment by guest artist Mariana Ferreiro Braun (Mrs. Hopalong) on violin. Yoremem closed the show with a sweet a capella song performed in the original Yoreme language from her first CD.

Listen to her sensitive, passionate “Besame Mucho,” and you’ll remember the best love you’ve ever heard. Or, her sly, sexy “Frenesi” delivered slowly and sensuously. Listen with big ears when she tears into “Cuando Vuelva a tu Lado” (melodically identical to the old Four Aces tune, “What a Difference a Day Makes”). Don’t miss her upbeat, cheerful rendition of the great José Marti’s poem/song “Guantanamera.” Listen to a basically sad song “Lagrimas Negras” (black tears), a Cuban composition which she turns into a swinging cha-cha-cha. “Orgullo” (proud), a beautiful tune from the pen of Mexican composer Alvaro Carrillo, is turned into pure crystal by her voice.

Yoremem comes to us from the Mayo (not Maya) Indian culture located in the northwestern area of Mexico in the state of Sonora on the coast of the Gulf of California. “Yoreme” means native or Indian, “Yoremem” means from the Mayo native. Yoremem’s musical influences are from her parents, both singers and musicians. “From my father I carry the bolero (the essence of Latin musical romanticism), and by my mother the Yoreme culture. I am born out of the womb of the Yoreme culture, I am grateful to Mother Earth for having given me this life. The Yoreme culture is my song, my love and my inspiration for living,” Yoremem says.

If you missed these recent terrific shows, Yoremem brings this compelling music four days a week to Casa Payo. She has two CDs out, Gracias a la Vida (with “Hopalong” providing all of the original arrangements), with most of the music she sings at her appearances backed by a small band of great musicians, and Yew Manchu (Sunrise), a selection of pure Yoreme songs rendered in the original Mayo Indian language, backed by musicians playing traditional Yoreme instruments.

Dick Avery is the head sipper at VinoClubSMA, a wine club devoted to the enjoyment of “boutique” Mexican wines through free wine tastings. He can be reached at vinoclubsma@gmail.com  or visit the website, www.vinoclubsma.com. 

Noche bohemia!

Concert
Remembering the Past
Marcos Esqueda & Elena Shoemaker
Sat, May 3, 7:30pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
75/50 pesos

In “Remembering the Past,” tenor Marcos Esqueda and pianist Elena Shoemaker play Mexican songs from many decades and American songs given new meaning in Spanish.

Esqueda has loved music his entire life and is particularly fond of Mexican ballads and boleros from the great masters of the Golden Age. He has a weekly radio program on XESQ Radio San Miguel called “Remembering the Past.” It airs 8–9pm on Sundays. He has hosted more than 95 programs, sharing the history of Mexican music and featuring the greats like Augustin Lara, María Grever, Gabriel Ruiz, José Alfredo Jimenez and Cri-Cri. He also loves Broadway musicals and American songs by composers such as Charlie Chaplin, Cole Porter, and Lerner and Loewe.

He’ll be joined by long-time friend Elena Shoemaker for an evening of musical variety, passion and humor.

The show will be performed in Spanish, but for the few times when translations are necessary, the pianist speaks English.

Tickets are 75 pesos at the Teatro, with a special senior discount price of 50 pesos for those with proof of having reached la tercera edad!

Music to My Ears
By John Bills

American pianist Richard Dowling provided an exhilarating finale to the 2007-08 season of Pro Musica San Miguel, returning for the second of two highly successful concerts. His first program (reviewed in last week’s column) was a rousing affair featuring American Ragtime and piano music of George Gershwin, played with style, enthusiasm and staggering technique. This second concert showed the pianist’s more serious side in a varied program of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Liszt, Fauré and Chopin. A unique aspect of Dowling’s concerts is his custom of introducing each piece with historical background, stories of the composers and personal experiences illustrated with charm and humor, a custom that enriches the concert experience and was uniformly appreciated by his audience at St. Paul’s Church last Sunday.

Two pieces by Mozart opened the program. The Rondo in D, K.485, one of the composer’s best known solo pieces, was sheer classicism played with sparkling style and contrasting nicely with the Fantasy in D Minor, K.397 and its romantic, even improvisational qualities. Its ruminating, questioning melody was beautifully highlighted. Next came the 32 Variations in C Minor, WoO 80, by Beethoven, showcasing the full range of this composer’s boiling temperament, from mumbled grumbles to thundering outbursts. A tour-de-force in Dowling’s hands.

Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales showed the pianist’s deep affinity for this composer’s music. The waltzes alternate between formal and patrician to dreamily nostalgic or wildly swirling. The final movement found Dowling interweaving themes from each preceding waltz into an illusive, ghostly memory, helped by unusually sensitive pedaling. The concert’s first half closed with an encore of sorts from the preceding evening’s program, Two Waltzes in C from George Gershwin’s “Pardon My English,” which again demonstrated Dowling’s complete mastery of this composer’s music. 

After a brief intermission, the pianist returned for a bravura performance of the Franz Liszt Concert Etude in D-flat Major, known as Un Sospiro (A Sigh). The gentle-sounding title and its simple melody belie the tremendous difficulty of this piece. It is in fact a study in cross-hand playing (the melody alternates between each hand throughout) with rich flowing arpeggio harmonies, requiring both big climaxes and ethereal fingerwork. This was a compelling performance bringing together Dowling’s outsized technique and innate poeticism. 

French music followed, the pianist’s own transcription of a rarely heard vocalise by Ravel in the form of a Spanish habanera and the Ballade in F# Major by Gabriel Fauré. Beginning as a nocturne, then at turns agitated and rhapsodic, the ballade was full of atmosphere (the elaborate bird trills towards the end) and hints of the impressionistic style that was soon to completely overtake French music. 

The program closed with a set of three Chopin pieces elegantly played with clear-eyed romanticism reminiscent of the “Rubinstein school” of Chopin performance: unsentimentalized and with none of the artificial effects so often encountered in this music. Instead we heard timeless melodies spun out as if in a vocalise by Renée Fleming in the Fantasie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, and gently rocking bass and rushing waterfalls in the lullaby, Berceuse in D-flat Major. Too rarely encountered in concerts, Dowling closed with the nostalgic Barcarolle in F-sharp Major with its 6/8 visions of sliding along the Grand Canal, heading into rougher open water before returning to safe harbor. A musician’s piece played by an expert musician. It is a credit to his sensitivity that Dowling chose not to break the mood by playing the “Revolutionary” Etude or some other such bombastic encore. Instead he sent the audience home with the memory of the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice, an elegant and noble melody played by Dowling in remembrance of Jack Deal, husband of his San Miguel hostess, Mrs. Carol Deal. A heart-felt tribute indeed and a fitting end to this season of exceptional music from Pro Music of San Miguel.

Spring choir concert returns
By Beverly Russell

Concert
Coro Voces Unidas
Thu, Apr 24, 7pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Cnr Mesones & Hernández Macías
70 pesos

The community choir Coro Voces Unidas, under director Xavier Hernandez, is presenting its spring concert. The choir received a standing ovation for its performance last year.

This year’s program includes some classic choral works— three sections from Antonio Vivaldi’s masterpiece Gloria, a modern jazz Alleluia by Thomas Benjamin and “Pie Jesu” from contemporary composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem. Hernandez has invited two of his students to participate: tenor Victor Ramirez and 12-year-old Olivia Morgan who will sing with San Miguel’s favorite soprano Clara Dunham. In addition, the choir’s accompanist Liliana Gutierrez will play a solo piece and Hernandez also will sing an aria or two. Tickets for the concert are 70 pesos at the Peralta box office.

Gypsy music to benefit Cereka

Concert
Guitarist Javier “Javivi” Estrada
Mon, Apr 21, 7pm
Teatro Santa Ana
100 pesos

San Miguel’s famous gypsy musician, Javier “Javivi” Estrada will give a concert whose proceeds will benefit the nonprofit organization Cereka.

Gypsies originated in the Punjab of northwestern India, fleeing from clashes between invading Arab and Mongolian warriors. On their long odyssey, they settled in the countries of the Middle East, including Persia and Egypt. They became so closely associated with Egypt that they eventually came to believe that they were descendants of the Pharaohs, a legend to which many of their songs still refer. They were called “Gypcians” in English and “Gitano” in old Spanish, both ways of saying “Egyptian.” In fact, having no written history, they had forgotten where they really came from.

They quickly spread over Spain in the early fifteenth century and were not expelled later with the Moors and Jews because they represented no threat to reunified, Christian Spain, and because it was simply too difficult to find them. Eventually they gave up their nomadic ways and the Romani language (now identified by linguists as a simplified version of Sanskrit).

Tickets are on sale at the theater box office. Proceeds support Cereka, which provides rehabilitation care in San Miguel for children and adults with neurological, psychological and behavioral problems such as Downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, hydrocephaelus, multiple sclerosis, scoliosis, and socialization, speech and learning problems. An orthopedic doctor on staff allows them to provide medical services for all their clients.

Basurto Musical Tours

Concert 
Sergio Basurto
Mon, Apr 21, 7:30pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
150 pesos, limited seating

When Sergio Basurto plays his folklore harp and flamenco guitar, he transports his audience on a magical tour around Latin America. Cascada (waterfall) is a polka inspired the multiple cascades in Paraguay. The Joropo “Concierto de la Llanura” is considered by many the informal national anthem of Venezuela.

The habaneras “La Paloma” and “La Comparsa” remind us that Havana is a port and its sailors and fishermen broadcast songs of sad poetry all over Latin America and Spain.

In contrast with this sadness are the exploding rhythms of Sones Jarochos from Veracruz, rhythms used in fiestas to accompany the Zapateado, a Mexican flamenco.