Album de Fotos 2

12 September 2000 … Twelve days after I return to México from the fabulous Chanticleer Festival adventure, I play in the Teatro Principal in Guanajuato, in a concert presented by Cultural Diffusion of the University of Guanajuato. The Teatro Principal is the home of a truly wondrous nine-foot Steinway. The piano and I bonded for a lovely evening of a CPE Bach Kenner und Liebhaber ("the one who knows, the one who loves") Sonata; Laurence (Laurie) Altman's Fugue and Soliloquy, lyrical, tragic, austere; Arturo Márquez' gorgeous Días de Mar y Río (Days of Sea and River), full of clave rhythms and bolero melodies; Hacia la Bruma ( Towards the Mist) of Ramón Montes de Oca's evocative dream landscapes Dos Estampas; the elegiac Lullaby for Katya and the much-loved Serenade: i carry your heart with me of Olga Gorelli. The evening closed as it began, with a Sonata, this time Federico Ibarra's extraordinary and dramatic Third Sonata, subtitled Madre Juana. The works of Altman, Márquez, Gorelli, and Ibarra were premieres in Guanajuato.

After the performance, in front of the beautiful concert poster which
the University Cultural Diffusion graphic artist designed.

With composer Ramón Montes de Oca, whose music I played that night.

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MÉXICO … 22 September 2000 … A concert in México DF (Distrito Federal), the capital of the Republic, presented by CEMARC (CEntro MExicano-Americano de Relaciones Culturales) and Fomento Educacional, part of their 30^th anniversary celebration. The Muchas Voces program, consisting primarily of music from México and the US, seems particularly fitting to this binational occasion celebrating a binational organization.

A post-concert moment with maestros
Arturo Márquez and Ramón Montes de Oca …

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CUBA … XV Festival de Música Contemporánea de La Habana, 2-9 de octubre del 2000

With preparations at the last possible minute - I didn't know until three days before my departure whether or not I'd actually be able to go! - in October I travel to Cuba, to perform as an invited artist in the XV Festival of Contemporary Music of Havana, Cuba. It's a voyage of great emotion: as I wrote to some friends on the eve of my departure, I go without the expectation of changing the minds of politicians but rather with the hope of helping people connect with each other as individuals, through music.

My first concert takes place in Casa de las Américas, a venue where so many artists from all over Latin America have felt welcomed and celebrated. I felt not only welcomed but positively spoiled by Music Director María Elena Vinueza and everyone else who works there. In my Casa concert, Muchas Voces/Un Piano begins to metamorphose a little: instead of the Emanuel Bach Sonata I begin with Salmodia I of Alicia Urreta and play only the first of Montes de Oca's Dos Estampas, Vestigio de Sombra (Vestige of Shadow); Días de Mar y Río of Márquez, Lullaby for Katya and the Serenade of Olga Gorelli, Laurie Altman's Fugue and Soliloquy; and c-t of Brad Garton, a piece for piano and tape which Brad wrote for me to celebrate the binational communication symbolized by the Fulbright. It seems particularly appropriate to play that piece in Cuba: the two instruments start out sounding as though they are two completely different life-forms and end by having a passionate encounter. The program ends, of course, with the riveting Third Sonata of Ibarra. What a feeling of pride to be playing the premiere in Cuba of every one of these works!

Two days later I play a concert in the residence of the US Interests Section, a program yet again slightly different: Hacia la Bruma (Towards the Mist) , the second of the Dos Estampas of Montes de Oca; and instead of Altman's Fugue and Soliloquy, some of his lovely Jazz Preludes … new versions of Many Voices/One Piano continue to be born … My role as "musical ambassador", initiated with the Fulbright-García Robles grant, takes on new shades of meaning in Cuba, where my listeners are a mixture of Cubans, North Americans, Chileans, Argentines, and who knows how many others. I feel honored that two great Cuban musicians, jazz trumpeter "El Greco" and pianist Frank Emilio, one of the pioneers of Cuban jazz piano, are present. Maestro Emilio is now quite elderly and it is not easy for him to get around, so I feel especially honored that he attended my concert. Later a group of us go on to the jazz club where El Greco is playing. What a night of music!

The generosity of Cubans – in a country where most people have very little in terms of material possessions – is extraordinary, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of music. A good musician, no matter what his or her idiom, is accorded great respect and included in whatever musical activity may be afoot. After my Casa concert, I go to La Zorra y el Cuervo, reputedly one of the best Afro-Latin jazz clubs in La Habana, with two US musicians whose concert I'd attended the day before: wonderful soprano Patrice Michaels, distinguished flutist Lyon Leifer, and great Chicago pianist Bill Dresden. Lyon sits in with the charanga band playing one of his Indian flutes; during the break Patrice and Bill perform some Gershwin songs and I play Márquez' Días de Mar y Río . There's no distinction made between musicians who play "classical" or any other kind of music: the attitude is that it's ALL music – how refreshing!

My last day in La Habana, I attend a young people's concert, performed by young people. I listen, with great enjoyment, to a little kids' chorus, an older kids' chorus, and finally a performance of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf: the orchestra is a youth orchestra and the whole cast is kids. The only visible adult is composer Guido López Gavilán, conducting the orchestra. The level of musicianship is breathtaking. Intonation and tuning are at a very high level: I have heard worse from adult professional musicians, in the US and in México; and even the little kid chorus is singing consistently on pitch, with extraordinarily clear diction, contrast, and expression.

In chatting after the concert with López Gavilán and María Elena Vinueza, among others, I discover that here, if a kid displays musical promise, she or he is given an instrument and lessons, often with some of the best musicians in the country. Many of the things that are considered to be essential to "the good life" in the United States – television, a new car every year or so, a cellphone for every member of the family - are unimaginable luxuries. Putting together a meal which includes more than one of the recommended food groups may be impossible on many days. But children who manifest any kind of musical talent are given free instruments and training of the highest level, and nurtured. My voyage to Cuba gave me much food for thought: there are many things to consider, and this is not a black and white situation (what is?) but it is clear that here there are different values.

In Casa de las Américas, the piano was placed in front of an immense "árbol de la vida" – tree of life – crafted in Oaxaca, México, a gift from México to Cuba. What more appropriate place to perform music of México!

With Ambassador Vickie Huddleston and great jazz trumpeter "El Greco" after the concert in the Residence of the US Interests Section. "El Greco" came to my show – what an honor! – and then a group of us (see below) went on to the club where he was performing. What a night of music!

Later – much later! - at the jazz club where El Greco was playing.

Street scene in La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) … La Habana, Cuba - like Guanajuato, México – is a World Heritage Zone, part of the Patrimonio de la Humanidad, the Heritage of Humanity. This picture shows a little of the heartstopping paradox which is the very tiny bit I saw of Cuba during my one week there: beautifully restored buildings cheek by jowl with structures which are festooned with the quotidian reality of laundry. Curiously, I valued them both. Some of the beautiful restoration, yes, is done for the benefit of tourists, and some for national pride and the value of preserving heritage and history. At the same time, unless you have very thick layers of insulation, it is not possible to protect yourself from the reality of Cuban daily life, and this I found precious and admirable.

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WASHINGTON, DC, 2 November 2000. Muchas Voces-Un Piano: Music of México is the concluding concert of Music of Spain and Latin America, part of the Smithsonian Institution's Piano300 exhibition. The series of four concerts is partially sponsored by the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives, whose Director is the dynamic and lovable Refugio Rochin, one of the most imaginative people I know. I perform in the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC, an extraordinarily beautiful venue with felicitous acoustics and one of the most gracious and welcoming ambiences of any concert hall I know. This is the third time I've played at the Instituto Cultural, and so now it feels like home. Even though I have been performing most of this music for over four months, when all of these Mexican works are together on one program I am amazed at the diversity and complete distinctiveness of these multifarious voices. Muchas Voces, Many Voices, indeed!

The program starts with two pieces by Ricardo Castro, one of Mexico's most eminent composers of the late 1800s-early 1900s (when he died in 1907, three days of national mourning were declared). Then Rodolfo Halffter's Homenaje a Arturo Rubinstein: Nocturno (Hommage to Artur Rubinstein: Nocturne) , a beautiful, atmospheric work which conjures up memories of Chopin's great nocturnes and Bartók's "night-music": mysterious birdcalls, velvety shadows, a bell at dawn. The first half closes with Márquez' Días de Mar y Río, brilliant and luscious as always, unequivocally a celebration of the piano's virtuosic capacities and of the vitality and expressiveness of the clave rhythms and 4AM bolero mournings which so richly inspire Márquez' music.

The second half begins with both of Ramón Montes de Oca's Dos Estampas, tone poems for the piano: each of them like a long, deliberate journey down a river through some densely populated interior landscape. We end with Federico Ibarra's extraordinary Third Sonata, subtitled "Madre Juana" because it takes some of its thematic and textural material from his opera of that name. This wonderful work IS operatic: it has drama, mystery, pathos, unremitting suspense, incredible rhythmic and harmonic vitality.

This concert represents the US premiere of Montes de Oca and Halffter, the Washington-area premiere of Márquez, and my second performance in Washington of the Ibarra Sonata of which I played the US premiere in February of 2000. Everyone loves the music, and I feel very happy and proud to be the vehicle for sharing the work of these wonderful composers with listeners in the capital of the United States. Smithsonian program producer Howard Bass notes in his very lovely thank-you letter to me that this was the only program of the series of four which focussed principally on contemporary music. It was also nice for me that the program of music from México was the concluding one of the series and, incidentally, the only one with a female performer!

… after the concert, with Refugio Rochin,
director of the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.

… with Howard Bass, program producer for all of the concerts which accompanied the Piano300 exposition; Refugio Rochin, Juan Manuel Saldívar, subdirector of the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC; Cynthia Wolloch, director of Fulbright Programs for Central and Latin America; and John Hishmeh of the Fulbright programs.