50-voice choir to sing in San Miguel
By Elsmarie Norby June 13, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Concert
Palo Alto High School Concert Choir
Fri, June 20, 7pm
El Sindicato
Recreo 4
Free

The Palo Alto High School Concert Choir will perform here on June 20. The choir of 50 voices has an impressive 80-year tradition of excellence in choral music, winning awards and standing ovations in Europe and South America.

San Miguel is privileged to be a part of their first Mexico tour, through the sponsorship of ANYÉL, a nonprofit music program for local children whose motto is “planting musical seeds.” ANYÉL also offers free concerts like this one throughout the year.

Conductor Michael Najar directs five vocal ensembles as part of the faculty at Palo Alto High School, south of San Francisco. He is an active composer, making his mark with humorous works such as a song cycle entitled “The Moral Decline of a Cowboy after the Death of His Horse,” which was performed on both coasts to much acclaim. He is also a baritone soloist who has toured extensively in Europe or performing with opera companies and orchestras.

Within the large choir is a smaller ensemble called “The Madrigal Singers.” They also will perform at this concert, wearing Renaissance costumes and giving us delightful musical ditties from that period.


Mark your calendars and don’t miss this concert. Tell your neighbors, and remember that children are especially welcome. It is part of the mission of ANYÉL to bring great concerts by talented and inspired young people free-of-charge, to include our whole community.

Elsmarie Norby is the director of ANYEL. The website is www.anyel.com  or email her at elsmarienorby@yahoo.com. 

Little violins can lead to big music
By Barbara Porter and Bob Kelly

Chamber Music Festival
July 31–Aug 17
Various venues
www.festivalsanmiguel.com 

A mariachi street musician asked a young Canadian artist, Leonard Brooks, to teach his son the violin some 55 years ago, setting in motion a tradition of music education that has produced famous musicians and helped lead to the founding of the international summer chamber music festival.

“Before long, there were too many kids coming to my studio to keep on giving lessons there,” recalled Brooks, now 96 and still painting every day.

The staff of Bellas Artes in Mexico persuaded him to open a music department at the Bellas Artes here and Brooks became the unpaid director for 30 years before retiring in 1984.

Bellas Artes hired two members of the Guanajuato symphony to teach cello and bass, with Brooks teaching violin and viola, and provided all of the instruments, including a piano and kid-sized violins. Before long, Brooks said, an orchestra formed that regularly gave public concerts of classical music.

Brooks and some friends, including Tom Sawyer and the late Carmen Masip, the long-time director of the local Bellas Artes, conceived the idea of an annual chamber music festival that would include classes for young musicians.

“We arranged for the Fine Arts Quartet, whom I knew and who were the best known chamber group, to play without charge in 1979,” Brooks said. The Fine Arts Quartet returned the next year and a single group performed for each of the next four years on a paying basis. The festival expanded to six groups and soloists by 1988, with Brooks doing the first 10 posters. Now internationally known, the festival will celebrate its 30th season, July 31–August 17, with performances by 12 groups and soloists presenting 18 concerts.

This summer’s festival is inviting young musicians from the US as well as from Mexico to be among the 35 participants attending master classes given by the world class performers. The La Catrina String Quartet is returning as the quartet in residence to supervise the student program and also will present three concerts.

From the start, the festival invited promising young musicians from around Mexico and more than 1,000 have attended master classes given by the chamber groups. Two brothers from Mexico City were among the first scholarship students and went on to play for chamber groups abroad. Teo Arias became first violinist with the Bamberg String Quartet in Germany and Javier Arias became the cellist with the Amernet String Quartet in the US.

The members of the José White String Quartet of Aguascalientes met as students at the festival in the nineties and then formed their own group, which performs here and in Mexico City regularly and completed a 21-concert tour of the US earlier this year.

Among the students Brooks taught at Bellas Artes were Daniel and José Luis Aguascalientes, founders of the popular Aguascalientes Brothers Quintet, who have performed in more than 20 countries, and Rudolpho Lopez, now concertmaster for the university symphony orchestra in Mexico City.

“When I quit playing three years ago,” Brooks said, “I gave my two best violins to Daniel and José Luis, who now use them in performances. I still get a lot of satisfaction from having taught them and all the other children.”

While no longer playing, Brooks has kept up his two other passions, painting and writing. “There’s a connective tissue between writing, painting and music,” he said in an earlier interview.

His latest book, My Collage World, is scheduled to be published June 13 and Brooks is planning a signing later this month. He also is bringing out a book of his paintings of flowers later this year. In 2003, he published a book of photographs by his late wife, Reva, an acclaimed photographer, and published My Watercolor World in 2006. Since then, he collaborated with his Siamese cat on its life story, Sir Knobby, A Cat-ography, which Brooks illustrated with 50 drawings.

Bob Kelly was a reporter for his hometown newspaper and the editor of a weekly, both in Parkersburg, WV. His last newspaper job was with the Chicago Sun-Times. Barbara Porter is serving as president of the board of the 2008 Chamber Music Festival.

Don’t miss the sounds of Cuba and Veracruz
By Guadalupe Meza

Concert
Colibrí
Veracruz, baile de garita
Fri, June 20, 7:30pm
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
130 pesos

Colibrí (hummingbird), a musical group popular in Europe and the United States, has chosen San Miguel de Allende as the venue for the Mexican premiere of its most recent production, an homage to the music of Veracruz titled “Veracruz, baile de garita.”

Colibrí was formed in 1996 with the concept of performing music exclusively using instruments native to the country. Its musicians play with the technical finesse of the academy coupled with the flavor and exuberance of popular music. The group performs Veracruzana music and regional rhythms such as Huasteco, Jaliciense and Bambucos from Yucatán.

Tickets are available at Galería Atenea, Jesús 2. For more information, call 155-9336.

Singer dedicates concerts to San Miguel
By Shannon Day

Concert
Shannon Day
Tue–Wed, June 17–18, 7:30pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

The power of San Miguel de Allende is in the people—the locals, the artists, the great mix of both. In 2002, at the invitation of a friend, I came to Mexico for the first time.

 Although I had traveled through Europe and much of the US and Canada, I knew nothing of Mexico except border towns and the “Mexico” exhibit at EPCOT Center at Disney.

From the moment I stepped off the plane to the beautiful sound of a language with which I was only vaguely familiar, to waiting at the local bus station where vendors sold churros and chips with hot sauce and lime, I knew I had fallen in love. This all happened before I even got to San Miguel.


A singer and teacher living in San Francisco, I kept very busy running around seven days a week from job to job. When I hit the hot, dusty, cobbled streets of San Miguel, I stopped, looked around and saw a three-dimensional life all around me. I had never been still enough to notice this kind of beauty before.

I remember, not long ago, sitting down to dinner in San Miguel at the home of new friends. At the head of the table sat a couple, generous in spirit and in knowledge, open and honest with their opinions and willing to share their own stories. They opened their lives and invited me into a world of culture, language, laughter and beauty. I have never been the same.

This is my fourth trip to San Miguel. Each time I build more awe-inspiring memories; built on stories of individuals who touched me and from whom I have learned so very much. I now remember that time is not infinite, that kindness matters, that our basic needs are very simple and that a balance can be found. This concert is dedicated to all of the people I have met here and to San Miguel for bringing us all together.

An ample repertoire of rhythms
By Gabriela Servin

Concert
Sergio Basurto
Latin American harp and flamenco guitar
Mon, June 16, 7:30pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
150 pesos, limited seating

Local musician Sergio Basurto Valencia presents a unique concert in which he combines his extensive knowledge of Latin American rhythms with his ample repertoire of flamenco rhythms and toques.

Born in Mexico City, Basurto learned to play the Mexican harp from several distinguished folklore musicians. 

Basurto derives enormous pleasure in playing for audiences unfamiliar with this music. He also is dedicated to fostering the appreciation of this wonderful instrument and is always ready to teach it to enthusiastic musicians who want to try it.

Basurto plays melodies from Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Paraguay and Brazil, then he turns to his guitar and plays the flamenco rhythms introduced by the Spanish during the colonial epoch. He lets us know how these rhythms are at the core and essence of the Latin American melodies, though softened by the different natures of indigenous musicians.