Have you Heard?
By Doug Robinson June 20, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

What’s goin’ on 
Jazz Concert
The Cross Border Trio
Thu, July 10
El Viejo Topo Café-Teatro
Stirling Dickinson 28

After almost two months in San Diego being nearly overwhelmed by the process of selling our house (the only house to close escrow in America this year, or at least it felt that way), I am back and ready to rock!

Re-entry to San Miguel is always a leisurely affair, a casual unwinding as opposed to the intense splash of visiting New York or some other fast-paced pueblo. Last night, as Glenda and I walked the streets and soaked up the sounds and smells of Centro, the guilty Los Estados Unidos pleasures of fast food and neon-festooned multiplexes on every corner, of plush and bouncy wall-to-wall carpet in every room, of wide and smooth streets busy with predictable traffic patterns, all seemed to recede into darkness like a dream I knew I had enjoyed but couldn’t quite remember.

One thing that truly surprised me about coming home this time was the large number of restaurants and other venues that are currently featuring live music here. It’s always been a part of San Miguel’s culture, but it seems there are more venues today where you can hear local musicians plying their trade than when we first moved here in 2004. Tio Lucas and Mama Mia deserve special mention for keeping the live music flame alive longer than anyone else, but over the years they have been joined by Romanos, El Campanario, La Fragua, D’Vino Wine Bar, Milagros, Los Faroles, Chocolate, Limerick’s, Bella Italia, Casa Sierra Nevada, Casa Payo and other restaurants, as well as new performance spaces like Isaac’s cool El Viejo Topo Café-Teatro and the new Bistro opening up at Los Senderos. If you were to spend a couple of hours just walking around town on a typical Wednesday night, you could actually hear jazz, Gypsy swing, salsa, flamenco, rock, folk singing duos, mainstream jazz, tango, Klezmer, mariachi and romantic Mexican ballads. It seems impossible, but all of this is taking place, night after night, within a few city blocks. Isn’t it odd that tiny San Miguel outstrips mega-city San Diego in the area of musical variety on a nightly basis?

Now I know my perspective is biased, but I think the paragraph above (especially combined with various musical benefits and the annual chamber music and jazz festivals) reinforces how I’ve always described San Miguel to my friends: an intimate “arts-oriented town.” I can tell you as a performer that there are a few drawbacks to swimming in such a small pond—over-familiarity with certain musicians can create empty tip jars and close audience ears to new projects. Even adjusting for the lower cost of living here, the pay is almost always less than what our musical counterparts in the States would get. On the other hand, ambitious performers can take advantage of the relative lack of bureaucracy and simply book the Peralta or Bellas Artes or El Viejo Topo and put on a big show with a minimum of hassle. Back in San Diego, I used to have to lobby for months in order to secure the perfect night for my trio to perform at one of the (only) three live jazz clubs downtown.

Yes, some of the artistic mystique of watching performers can dissipate when they live next door and your children attend the same schools with their kids, and when you’ve heard them playing background music in several settings over the years, but even someone as musically restless as I am is always discovering new talent in town. And I’ve also heard great new things come from new combinations of familiar players—anyone who has witnessed Ken Basman, Victor Monterrubio, and Tyler and Alma Mitchell blowing the smoked-stained roof off of Limerick late on a Wednesday night will tell you that it’s a far more intense level of jazz than what these same guys might play at Tio Lucas on any given night. Granted, it’s not for everyone…but it might be for you.

Speaking of a different level of jazz—my friend from San Diego, uber-bassist Rob Thorsen, is bringing his “modern transnational jazz group” called The Cross Border Trio to El Viejo Topo on July 10. These guys are on a swing through Mexico on their way to gigs in Mexico City and the jazz festival in Chiapas, and we’re lucky to have them.

Personally, I love to play music but I’ve always turned down regular gigs in town. The upside of this philosophy is that when I’m ready to debut a new project it feels more like a “special event,” at least to me. The downside is that I just plain miss the music-making, trying to sneak up on and win over audiences on a regular basis. For that reason, I’ve decided to up my participation for the next couple of months and play at a couple of the coolest restaurants in town. I look forward to seeing you in the audience.

Finally, I’ve been so distracted with packing that I really haven’t gotten exposed to much new recorded music recently, so I don’t have much to recommend in this installment of “Have You Heard?” I did, however, get to see the terrific group Oregon live in concert, which prompted me to recruit them for this year’s jazz festival (November 29–December 4, a new time slot for the festival).

I figure I can never go wrong by reminding you that my favorite jazz album of the last decade is The Nearness of You—The Ballad Album, by the late saxophonist Michael Brecker, accompanied by pianist Herbie Hancock, guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jack DeJohnette (plus singer James Taylor on two numbers). It’s a sublime affair, mellow enough for date nights and brilliant enough for serious scrutiny.

Doug Robinson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who is now a full-time resident of San Miguel, along with his wife and three basset hounds.

Recital to benefit IREE

Concert
John S. Stump
Sat, June 28, 5pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
200/150/50 pesos

John S. Stump will present an organ recital for the benefit of the Instituto de Rehabilitación y Enseñanza Especial (IREE), the school for the deaf on Pila Seca. The program will feature three types of music. There will be music written for the organ by J. S. Bach, Mendelssohn and Franck. In addition, there will be transcriptions for the organ of well-known classical pieces such as the famous Canon in D by Pachelbel. Also featured on the program will be Broadway show tunes and popular Latin American tunes played in theater organ style.

Stump is a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York where he studied with Anthony Newman. He also has had master classes with Marie Claire Alain, Harold Vogel and Marilyn Mason. His theater organ study was with David Hegarty at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.

He has played recitals throughout the US and Mexico. He served as music director for various churches on both US coasts and before retiring was professor of organ at California State University, Hayward. He is now a full-time San Miguel resident and is on the board of directors of the Festival de Música de Cámara in August.

This will be a unique event for San Miguel. Since there are no working organs in public venues, no one has been in able to present an organ recital here in a long time. This recital is possible because Stump will be moving the organ from his home to St. Paul’s Church. The organ is a digital instrument manufactured by the Allen Organ Company of Macungie, Pennsylvania, and features some of the most sophisticated digital sampling and sound processing techniques available today.

Ticket are on sale at Macdonald’s Gym, Stirling Dickinson 28, and the Festival de Música de Cámara office in Bella Artes, Hernández Macías 75. Tickets also will be available at the door on the day of the event.

For more information about the school. visit www.iree-sanmiguel.org . For more information about the recital, call John Stump at 154-4221.

What is chamber music?
By Ken Morrow

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

What, indeed, is chamber music? At one time there was a simple answer—music played by small ensembles in the intimate setting of someone’s home. But that was in simpler times, before the explosion of composed music in the twentieth century and the increased presence of music from all cultures on the world stage in even more recent times thanks, in large part, to the internet. These and other phenomena have reopened the question and introduced a far more complex foundation on which to base the answer.

The 30th annual Festival de Música de Cámara has joined the worldwide conversation attempting to find a suitable new definition for this continually fascinating and increasingly complex and beautiful music. By focusing on its theme for this season, “Celebrating the Past—Embracing the Future,” the festival is offering its participants an opportunity to look at the entire range of what has been and is and perhaps will be called chamber music. How? Let’s take a look.

In “Celebrating the Past,” the festival is presenting a far broader and deeper range of traditional repertoire than ever before. Yes, there will be Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Shostakovich. There will also be William Byrd, Thomas Morley, J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel from the pre-classic era. There will be lesser known contemporaries of the classic composers such as Mikhail Glinka, Charles LeFebvre, Guadalupe Olmedo and Reinhold Glier. There will be composers who, though well-known in other musical genres, are not known as chamber music composers: Giachino Rossini, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Francis Poulenc. The more recent past will be celebrated with works by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstien and Ástor Piazzolla. And contemporary composers will be presented who continue this unbroken history into the present: Nikolai Kapustin, Andre Previn, Lowell Lieberman and Samuel Zyman. These works will be presented by some of the most prestigious performers in the field for the purpose of the pure enjoyment of 
its beauty on one level and to take a hard look at its long and lasting history on another. We will be looking at where this music began, what paths it has trod before and what makes it so enduring?

The real excitement begins when we start “Embracing the Future.” What is considered chamber music now and where might it develop as it gathers strength and speed with new ideas and younger performers and audiences? In looking at this part of the question the festival will present a broad spectrum of the work of some of the most current practitioners born in and working in all parts of the globe. There will be works by the composers David Balakrishnan, familiar from his work with the Turtle Island String Quartet in the past two seasons; Kenji Bunch and Katrina Wreede from the United States; Enrique Gonzalez-Medina and Jesus Echevarria, from Mexico; Fernando Otero from Argentina; Ronn Yedida from Israel; Nikolai Kapustin from Ukraine; and Michael Nyman from England whose work may sound familiar from his writing for films. The festival also will present ideas on this question from some of the most exciting and explorative young groups involved in the dialog today: the Ahn Trio, a piano trio of traditional instru
mentation dedicated to playing exclusively the work of living composers; Synergy Brass, who acknowledge no boundaries in their lively performances of music that ranges from well before the classic period to today’s popular songs; and the Poulenc Trio, an unusual combination of piano, oboe and bassoon who explore the full range of repertoire from Rossini and Handel to Jean Francaix and Enrique Gonzalez-Medina.

The music itself will span a gamut of inspirational sources from folk tunes to disco-inspired rhythms; Mongolian chant to Irish dance; shamanic ritual to the anguish of war; the traditional string quartet to the jazz soloist. Several of the pieces presented in the season have been composed since the turn of the twenty-first century and one was completed just a few short weeks before its performance here. This new piece for piano trio by American jazz composer Pat Metheny will have its Mexican premier at the festival.

In addition to the concert schedule, the festival will explore the nature and meaning of this music through a series of lectures presented in the weeks leading up to the festival and during the season itself. “When Jimi meets Ludwig: Interactions between popular music and chamber music” and “Different Themes: Diversity in the String Quartet” will be presented by Bryan Townsend, whose lecture on sources of themes in musical composition opened interesting dialogs during last season. Noted local pianist Ken Bichel will present “The Art and Practice of Improvisation in Classical Music and Jazz.” The season will open with a lecture and performance by Jesus Echevarria and the Carlos Chavez String Quartet on Echevarria’s recent composition “Cantes Huastecos.”

The great cross-over jazz and classical composer, Duke Ellington, once said, “There are just two kinds of music: good music and the other kind.” Whether for those who follow chamber music or for those who wish to explore its beauty and emotional depth for the first time, this 30th anniversary season of the Chamber Music Festival will provide as rich an experience of “good music” as has ever been presented here. This is an opportunity not to be missed. Come join the excitement—and enter the conversation.

Strength of the flamenco
By Gabriela Servin

Concert
Sergio Basurto
Latin American harp and flamenco guitar
Mon, June 23, 7:30pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50 A
150 pesos, limited seating

Sergio Basurto Valencia started his musical career in Mexico City at 16 and has offered concerts in San Miguel for the past five years. He plays the multiple syncopated rhythms of Latin American folklore such as milongas, zamba, baladas, rumba and bossa nova. He also understands flamenco rhythms and interprets them with mastery.

On the harp, he will play a selection of Latin American folk themes like “Concierto en la Llanura” (Venezuela), “Cascada” (Paraguay), “La Paloma” (Cuba) and “Cielito Lindo” (Mexico). On the Spanish guitar will be “Milonga” (Uruguay), “Galopa” Argentina), “Siboney” (Cuba) and ending with a demonstration of his mastery and the strength of the flamenco: “Soleares, alegrias, tangos and buleria.”

Django, tango and baroque jazz 
By Julian Arcos

Concert
Tue, June 24, 7:30pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

These different jazz styles have something in common—Paris. First we have the figure of the Belgian gypsy musician Django Reinhardt, born in 1910. He was one of the first prominent jazz musicians to be born in Europe and the most renowned jazz guitarist of all time. He spent most of his early years in a gypsy caravan near Paris.

On the other hand, we have the tango, created in the early nineteenth century by European immigrants to Argentina and first recorded in Paris; at that time there were no recording studios in Buenos Aires. The tango was first interpreted by French military marching bands.

Argentinean Carlos Gardel gave fame and universality to the tango. He was an extraordinary composer and is now an icon of Argentinean culture. His young student Ástor Piazzola played the bandoneón (a type of small accordion that sounds like an organ). He was supposed to travel with Gardel on a tour, but because of his youth his father didn’t give him permission. That denial was a lucky twist for him, because on that tour Carlos Gardel and his band had a fatal plane crash.

Ástor Piazzola spent his early years in New York, where he was exposed to the sounds of jazz and the music of J.S. Bach. Later, while studying in Paris with Stravinsky’s disciple Nadia Boulanger, Piazzola had a vision of blending jazz, tango and classical music. This vision gave music, and especially tango, its natural evolution into fine cultured music. Some of his famous compositions are “Libertango,” “Angel’s Suite” and “Verano Porteño.”

Another great inspiration for this concert is Jacques Lousier, born in 1934 near Paris, famous for his interpretations of J.S. Bach in jazz.

The concert features virtuoso guitarist Julian Arcos, known all over town for his ability to blend jazz, Latin and international music, and his smooth, comfortable and emotional style of playing. On piano, Daniel Curtidor shares with Arcos his passion for good music and an open mind for new paths in jazz and classical music. Carlos de Aguinaga is an excellent, precise percussionist and dynamic drummer. At the flute is Ruben García, also a great musician.

The program will include tunes like “Libertango,” “Minor Swing,” “Cumparsita,” Paganini’s “Capriccio” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” from J.S. Bach. 

Hitting the high notes for the niños
By Gene Crane and Jane Sallis

Concert
The Sounds of the Supremes™
Patronato Pro Niños benefit
Thu, Jul 17, 8:30pm
El Alamo
Salida a Celaya
US$200/150/75

Each year Patronato Pro Niños holds a major event to raise funds for healthcare and dental care for area children. This year is no exception. The Sounds of the Supremes will present a live performance of riveting and rocking music.

Remember those great hit songs of the sixties and seventies? Well, you can come see them performed live at El Alamo. Best of all, these four glamorous performers are coming to San Miguel for one reason only—to help us help the children who need it most. We are honored by their generosity and know you will be, too! Two of the children we will be helping are José and Jorge.

José, age six, suffers from severe lymphoblast leukemia and requires studies of the spine to enable further treatment. Each study costs 8,834 pesos and he needs two of them in the near future.

Jorge, age nine, has a deformity caused by a tumor, known as liposarcoma, on the right side of his face. The cause of the growth was not immediately apparent, but after several studies the diagnosis was rendered and to date he has endured three surgeries and is facing more. Each operation costs approximately 60,000 pesos. Due to the size of the tumor, the growth cannot be removed in its entirety and must be done in increments.

But there are many, many more who need our help for problems that range from strep throat and flu in the winter to hundreds of urgent cases, including cleft palates and traumatic injuries. An equally important component of our program is the Patronato Pro Niños Dental Van, which visits schools Mondays–Fridays to provide screening, treat cavities, teach dental hygiene and make referrals for more serious conditions.

Tickets for the Gala range from US$200 for Platinum reserved seating, which includes cocktails, a sumptuous dinner and a chance to bid on superb prizes at an auction, to $150 for Gold seating which includes all of the aforementioned at an unreserved table, to $75 for Silver seating at a smaller table for four with one bottle and set-ups for the table. Entrance time for holders of the Platinum and Gold tickets is at 6pm and holders of Silver tickets will be admitted at 8pm for the 8:30pm performance.

Tickets must be purchased in advance; none will be sold at the door. Tickets are currently on sale in the Patronato Pro Niños office at San Francisco 1, second floor, or you can email Lily at info@patronatoproninos.org  with your ticket order. You also can call her at 152-7796 to place an order and arrange to have the tickets delivered. American Express, MasterCard and Visa are accepted over the phone.