World tour: San Miguel, London, Paris, Tokyo 
By Guadalupe Lance December 5, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Concerts
Fine Arts Quartet
Festival de San Miguel de Allende
Sun, Tue, Fri & Tue, Dec 21, 23, 26 & 30, 8pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Mesones 82

Our community nurtures the arts in general, but music most particularly. Coming at the end of the year as it does, the Festival de San Miguel de Allende is the culmination of the many concerts heard during the year.

This year, their sixteenth season, the festival presents the renowned artists that have always been a staple of their programs: pianists Thomas Hrynkiw and Jorge Federico Osorio; violinists Ralph Evans and Efim Boico; violist Chauncey Patterson; cellists Shauna Rolston and Gilberto Munguia; clarinetist Luis Humberto Ramos; the Hermanos Aguascalientes and the Fine Arts Quartet, who is the special guest of this year’s festival.

The Fine Arts Quartet is one of the most distinguished ensembles in chamber music today, with an illustrious history of performing success and an extensive recording legacy. Founded in Chicago in 1946, and based at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1963, the Quartet is one of the elite few to have recorded and toured internationally for over half a century. Three of the Quartet’s current artists, Ralph Evans, Efim Boico and Wolfgang Laufer, have been performing together for 25 years. Chauncey Patterson joined them as interim violist for the 2008-9 season, replacing Yuri Gandelsman who recently retired from the Quartet.

Each season, the Fine Arts Quartet tours worldwide, with concerts in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Mexico City and Toronto. The Quartet also records actively, with over 65 works recorded since 1985. The latest releases include Bruckner; Mendelssohn, selected for the 2009 Grammy Awards Entry List as “Best Classical Album”; Four American Quartets, also on the 2009 Grammy list; Schumann, called “one of the very finest chamber music recordings of the year” by American Record Guide in 2007 and selected for the 2008 Grammy list; and Glazunov, which Musicweb International named one of the best recordings of 2007. Quartet members have helped nurture many of today’s top young ensembles. They have been guest professors at the national music conservatories of Paris and Lyon, as well as at the summer music schools of Yale and Indiana University. They also appear regularly as jury members for the Evian, Shostakovich and Bordeaux major competitions. French and A
merican public television has shown documentaries on the Fine Arts Quartet.

The quartet will perform four concerts during the festival and its members will perform in different works with the other artists of the festival.

The festival office at Plaza Colonial, Canal 21, 152-8380, can supply more information, or visit www.festivaldesanmigueldeallende.com.  

Single women and double reeds
By Michael Pearl

Pro Musica Concert
Ehecalli Wind Quintet
Sat–Sun, Dec 6–7, 5pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
200/150/80 pesos

Every section of an orchestra has its own personality, from the huffing and puffing of the brass to the gentle bowing of the strings through the thunder of the timpani. Left something out…what about our friends in the woodwind? The good news is that, no they have not been left out, but are coming to a concert hall near you this weekend.

The Ehecalli Wind Quintet is known throughout Mexico for the quality of their performances. They play two completely different programs on Saturday and Sunday. But what about these gentle instruments that they play; what are their characteristics and foibles?

The defining characteristic of a wind instrument is that the sound vibration, which we experience as music, is produced by a reed inside the mouthpiece. The clarinet uses a single reed which vibrates against the mouthpiece to create a tone. Both the bassoon and the oboe play on double reeds, where a blade of plant material is folded over itself and the musician blows between the two blades. The blades vibrate against each other, creating the tone.

In every woodwind instrument worldwide, these reeds are always made of Arondo Donax, a giant reed which looks a lot like bamboo. So, where does this rare and delicate plant come from? Lost valleys in the Himalayas perhaps, or crocodile-infested swamps in Borneo? Well, neither actually…it grows abundantly around San Miguel de Allende!

Go down Calzada de la Estación, cross the railroad tracks and head down toward Presa Allende on the cobbled road. The whole left-hand side of the route for several kilometers is lined with Donax five meters tall. If you see a guy in a tuxedo kissing the Donax, don’t call the men in white coats; it’s just an impoverished oboe player trying to save money.

Marie Park, the delightful Ehecalli oboist, tells me that an oboe reed at its thinnest point is less than half as thick as a sheet of paper. Since they are so delicate, reeds are sensitive to changes in humidity, altitude and temperature. In San Miguel, with its bone-dry climate most of the year, altitude of 1,800 meters and extremes of hot and cold between day and night, playing wind instruments is a challenge. Not only that, Marie says, but reeds are very finicky with each one having its own personality and foibles. Sounds like the Pro Musica Board of Directors to me.

Marie also points out that a double reed functions in an identical manner to how the human vocal chords work, which might explain why the double reed instruments (oboe and bassoon) are able to achieve such vocal and singing qualities. At this point, Cuauhtemoc Trejo interrupts in no uncertain fashion using his human vocal chords to good effect. “Enough,” he says, “of bassoons and oboes; what about me?” Cuauhtemoc is the much-loved flautist with Ehecalli, who delights every San Miguel audience that he plays for with silver tones from his silver instrument. As a riposte I remind him of American humorist Ambrose Bierce’s definition of the flute in his famous Devil’s Dictionary: “a variously perforated hollow stick intended for the punishment of sin.” This does not go down well, so to make up for it I tell him that the flute players of an orchestra are renowned for being the best dressed, the quietest and the most gentlemanly of all musicians! All those qualities apply to Cauahtemoc.

At least at St. Paul’s, flautists don’t face instant death the way they did at the old Metropolitan Opera in New York City. And I’m not talking about imperious conductors stabbing too closely with their batons! The old building had become increasingly dilapidated with the ancient electrical wiring frayed and loose. During one performance, flautist Frederick Wilkins had a long rest in his part and put his silver flute down on the side of the stage nearest him. Suddenly there was a blinding flash and the instrument melted and fused all the stage lighting.

To move to calmer waters: The stately tones of Pro Musica’s 1927 Steinway will be heard at Ehecalli’s concerts. Ana Cervantes is the lady with the flying fingers. I asked her what it was like not having her own instrument and being faced at every concert with a different piano. She said, “You know, pianists love to complain about their lot. With reason: I never know what I will find. I can walk into the concert hall and find some beautiful shiny piece of furniture which, when I sit down to play it, sounds like a really bad four-letter word. On the other hand, I have walked into a public school auditorium in a town in the back of beyond to find an instrument which by some miracle has been lovingly conserved and maintained and with which I could make really beautiful music. I discovered some time ago that it makes no sense to complain about a piano; that’s only putting myself into an antagonistic relationship with it. Rather, if it’s an inferior instrument I have to bond with it in such a way that it will sound 
better than it ever imagined it could. If it’s a magnificent, or even decent, instrument I still have to connect with it so that together we can serve the music well.”

To that I would add that one of the wonderful things about Pro Musica and our marvelous home in St. Paul’s intimate music-making space is that audience and musicians bond, too. That makes for a very satisfying experience for all concerned. 

Concert

Rafael de la Rocha
Wed, Dec 10, 7pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

This Tuesday local favorite composer, singer and guitar player Rafael de la Rocha performs at the Biblioteca Pública.  A few years back Rafael, then an agriculture student, decided to pursue his passion and become a full time musician. hSDtarting in local competitions, Rafael then began composing and has several CD’s under his guitar strap.

The concert includes classic international songs as well as original pieces. This talented local performer is a great entertainer.

Discover your gypsy soul

Concert
Javier Estrada
Mon, Dec 8, 7 pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

This Monday, guitarist Javier Estrada presents “Noche de Fiesta Gitana” (A night of gypsy music). Discover the enchanting music from southern Spain as Estrada plays traditional melodies of the gypsies. Enjoy an intimate evening in the magnificent mural-decorated Sala Quetzal in the Public Library. Tickets available at the Teatro Santa Ana office.

Flashing fingers, flying hands
By Edward H. Simpson

Concert
Folklore harp & flamenco guitar
Sergio Basurto
Thu, Dec 11, 7:30pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
150 pesos

As you or I might lift a hand to adjust our eyeglasses, a gesture so commonplace and natural it’s virtually unconscious, so Sergio moves his fingers over the strings of his guitar beginning an Argentinian milonga, a piece of musical subtlety. His instrument is part of him, an extension of his body, mind and soul. He plays softly and between numbers speaks gently of the variety of rhythms he performs. Now, a delicate throbbing figure produced by the fingers on one string at time while the thumb plucks the melody gives a haunting air to a piece of romantic enchantment. And then he sets his guitar aside and takes the harp into his arms. This embrace produces a bright sound. 

From Paraguay comes the folk song of strings the harpist now brings forth, and then from the plains of Venezuela the lively dance Alma llanera. All 36 strings of Sergio’s folk harp contribute to the music.

Old Mexico gives us the next song, one recalling an old love that you cannot forget, and the melancholic thrumming harmonies resonate in our hearts as they do in the long tapering box of wood by which the harp gives body to its sound. Yet another Mexican tune reverberates to rhythmic melody with plucked bass that makes stately rolling chords under a lively melody. That mobile right hand finds the music in the strings and presents it to our ears. A cascada, waterfall, flows over the listener’s ears with a lush sense of refreshing water as arpeggios run the gamut of the strings and the illusion of water falling, sprinting, splashing and spraying washes over the rapt audience.

At last we return to Spain and flamenco roots. Sergio takes the guitar into his lap and makes it talk to us of the gypsy soul. That mobile and expressive right hand plays drum beats now and then while rendering that flying-fingers sound of the flamenco guitar, and the rhythm builds to a crescendo in conclusion and the listeners shout “Olé!”

A simple tune follows, but the rapid fingers give it ornament and the strumming nails join with the occasional drum-beat of knuckles or finger-tips on the guitar’s voice box. “Let’s go to Seville,” says the soft-spoken musician, and the sound of España bursts from the guitar with that familiar minor-key singing of the strings punctuated by the rapid strumming of chords that makes our feet restless. Rhythms unfold: alegrias, bulerias, rumba.

From podium to passionate piano

Piano Concert
Antonio Cabrero
Wed, Dec 10 & 17, 7:30pm 
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

International pianist Antonio Cabrero combines his classical training with traditional jazz and his own exotic inspirations to delight San Miguel audiences in two special performances during December.

Maestro Cabrero is known throughout Mexico as a conductor, but his passionate piano concerts over recent years have added to his glowing reputation. Not only improvisations of jazz standards, Cabrero also includes music from Spain and Mexico.

During his student years in New York, Cabrero discovered and explored classical Indian music. Many of his improvisations are influenced by those studies.

The December program in the Sala Quetzal includes a wonderful Gershwin medley with favorites such as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess. Then Cabrero journeys into Latin music with Spanish flamenco, pieces by Manuel de Falla, and Huapango by Pablo Moncayo.

These outstanding concerts are part of the Biblioteca Pública’s cultural program.