Cello Concert 
Bach and Carrillo 
Jimena Giménez Cacho
Wed, Apr 29, 7:30pm, first concert
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
150 pesos

Solo cellist and two musical giants

Famous Mexican cellist Jimena Giménez Cacho will give a series of three concerts at the Santa Ana Theater.

She will perform works from two great composers in musical history— J.S. Bach, the beloved and well-known Baroque composer, and the amazing Mexican composer and innovator Julian Carrillo (San Luis Potosí, 1875–1965), inventor of the microtonal system called the 13th sound.

The work for solo cello by these two extremely technical composers was very complex and hard to play at the beginning and, therefore, not often performed.

The first manuscript we find of Bach’s suites is a copy from his wife, Anna Magdalena, who regularly helped him transcribe his music. It appeared between 1727 and 1731. They were not performed as concertos until Pablo Casals brought them to the twentieth century.

Of the six Quasi-sonatas from Julian Carrillo, only one was performed by the French cellist Raine Flachot in the fifties. In 2006, Giménez premiered all six, almost 40 years after they were composed.


Giménez says, “With this series, I aspire to bring Julian Carrillo to the level of the great musical composers of all time. His work has brought extremely important innovations to music worldwide.

“With this concert series, I continue to promote the work of this great Mexican composer, who between the twenties and sixties worked with microtones. He divided the regular tone into sixteenths of a tone which he called ‘Sonido 13’ (13th sound).”

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to enjoy a magnificent performance of two musical giants. Tickets are on sale at the Teatro Santa Ana box. 


Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
1st Suite for cello 
Prelude, Allemande, Courent, Sarabande, Menuet I y II, Gige.

Julian Carrillo (1875–1964)
1st Quasi-sonata in 1/4th of tone for cello (1959) 
Dedicated to J.S. Bach 
I-Like recitativo 8´, II-Like recitativo, III-Finale 6´

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Concert
Gabriel Hernández
Fri, Apr 24, 9pm
El Viejo Topo Café-Teatro
Stirling Dickinson 28
200 pesos

Paying homage to musical roots
By Isaac Toporek

Based on a new stage of his life as a composer, the Cuban jazz pianist Gabriel Hernández is working with great enthusiasm on his next production for a Japanese record company that will be released by the end of this year.

In search of his musical roots, Hernández decided to delve in his own history and recount the different influences, along with the varied musical genres, that had guided his professional path. For this task, he explored the expressive capabilities of the jazz trio format.

He started composing “El rey en paz,” a piece to pay tribute to one of his most beloved teachers and friends in the Luis Casas Romero Conservatory of Music in Cuba—the well-known musicologist and anthropologist Pedro Martínez Acosta, who recently passed away. “El rey en paz” (The King in Peace) is a composition for piano and jazz trio where Hernández fused current jazz trends with the pianistic presence of Ravel and Debussy.

In another piece dedicated to Chick Corea, Hernández brought from his memory Three Quartets—the legendary production of the seventies where the audacious American jazz pianist and composer sought to create an album of quartets akin to the many string quartets of the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Impressionist periods, but using jazz instrumentation.

“Con aire flamenco” is a composition with asymmetrical beats and Spanish flavor blended to the jazz trio timbre, created in homage to Tete Montoliú and Chano Domínguez, two of the most prominent jazz pianists from Spain

Other musicians to whom Hernández dedicates his pieces include Thelonious Monk, one of the inventors of the new sound of the modern jazz form that we know as bebop, and Kenny Barron, another specialist in bebop and a creator of refined sonorities and harmonies who worked with unexplored rhythmical formulas.

With just these few examples, we can imagine that the compact disc that Hernández is preparing will be a delicious inventory of his fine sensitivity, his impressive skills on the piano, the influences gained throughout his career and, above all, a testimony to the development of a great artist pleased by his work.

The production has no title yet, or at least Hernández didn’t mention one, but it may be revealed at the concert. In sharing his magnificent new material, he will be accompanied by jazz greats in San Miguel—Tyler Mitchel on acoustic bass and Víctor Monterrubio on drums and percussion.