Windspiel: Cervantino encore
By Jim Blakley October 10, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Concert & Art Opening
Windspiel, duo from Germany
Eva Zöllner, Verena Wüsthoff
Art installation by Akiko Yasuda
Sat, Oct 11, 7 pm
Teatro Santa Ana
100 / 60 pesos for students

Tomorrow night one of last year’s featured Cervantino performers returns from Germany to perform as Windspiel. Verena Wüsthoff (recorders) and Eva Zöllner (accordion) founded the contemporary music duo in 2000. Both musicians work passionately to explore and advance their instruments’ repertoire and to present it in new contexts. With unusual, creative and multidisciplinary projects, Windspiel aims to intrigue their audiences and to familiarize a widespread public with contemporary music.

They cooperate intensively with composers from different nationalities. Their Saturday program features composers from Japan, Mexico and Germany.

Japanese artist Akiko Yasuda created an on-stage art installation specifically for this concert. Akiko has envisioned their music as wind and created works reminiscent of the sound of wind and with the plants of autumn and golden cocoons of silkworms

Wüsthoff performs regularly in Europe and is particularly interested in contemporary chamber music for recorder and other instruments, and the development of concert programs that combine music with other arts (theater, film, media and literature).

Zöllner has performed as a soloist in Europe, the US, Canada, Japan and Mexico. She has played with leading ensembles for contemporary music such as musikFabrik and Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, and with symphony orchestras such as Beethoven Orchester Bonn. She has premiered more than 50 new works for accordion in the last few years. 

Jim Blakley appreciates art and music in San Miguel, and dabbles in Canadian wit.

A flamenco soul
By Dick Avery

Concert
Folklore harp and flamenco guitar
Sergio Basurto
Thu, Oct 16, 7:30pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50 A
150 pesos, limited seating

Sergio Basurto comes from a musical family in Mexico City—everyone sings or plays an instrument and his great-grandfather was an orchestra conductor. Basurto formed a duo with a friend and became the opening act for a female singer. At his audition, she asked him to “play a little flamenco.” He told her, “I don’t know any flamenco.” “OK, play some rumba.” He said, “I don’t know any rumba.” She hired him anyway. Why? Because, “you have a flamenco soul”!

Gypsy music as personal experience
By Dick Avery

Concert 
Javier “Gitano” Estrada
Gypsy guitar and voice 
Fri, Oct 17, 7pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

Javier Estrada sees his music as an expression of the emotions that affect him as he experiences events moving through life’s path. Gypsy flamenco music is tied to and woven into his personal experience. “I was concerned with the lives of people and how to put music to the different people I met in the journey of my life,” he explains.

This approach still didn’t satisfy his desire for improvement, so it was back to studying the basics of chord construction, scales and music fundamentals. In this way, “I can be free with the music and the timing.” All without a maestro, all on his own. “In gypsy music, there are no copies; you play who you are . . . there are no schools for the song of the gypsies. You learn from listening and from being there.”




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