September 18 — Spanish Song Project: Songs of Mexico, Spain and Central and South America
Thanks to her residency with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Indy is privileged to host one of the rising stars among composers, Gabriela Lena Frank. She is composing Peregrinos (Pilgrims), a new orchestral work inspired by the experiences of Latino immigrants in Indianapolis. In the meantime, you can meet Frank and hear some of the music that won her prestigious residency.
When: Thursday, September 18, 7:30 PM
Where: Ruth Lilly Performance Hall in the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, University of Indianapolis, 1400 E. Hanna Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46227
Free Admission
From the U Indy description:
A program of songs from Mexico, Spain and Central and South America serves as the opening concert of the Spanish Song Project, a year-long creative effort joining students and faculty from the UIndy Music, English and Spanish Departments and featuring Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer with a multicultural heritage who will make multiple appearances at UIndy in the coming year as she continues a two-year residency with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The concert will feature UIndy Music Faculty and guests performing the music of Rodrigo, Turina, Chavez, UIndy faculty composer John Berners and Frank, including excerpts from Frank’s new song cycle, Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea.
Featuring Kathleen Hacker, soprano; Mitzi Westra, mezzo-soprano; Robert Gardner, baritone [for whom Frank composed the Cifars Songs]; Frank, Elisabeth Hoegberg and Amy Eggleston, piano; Thomas Tudek, Guitar; and Marko Petricic, bayan.
Why does Provocate think you should attend this event?
Four reasons:
- Almost without anyone noticing, the University of Indianapolis has emerged as one of the hotspots for new music, this is a remarkable deal for a free concert.
- U Indy has its own composer in residence, John Berners, whose work will be performed. Anyone whose first orchestral work is called The Last Days of Calvin and Hobbes is worth paying attention to.
- Gabriela Lena Frank’s residency is a great opportunity for the city … not to show that we are a major league art market, able to attract the best of the brightest music talent. It’s great because Frank has already started stimulating and linking diverse groups as part of the process of composing Peregrinos.
- This is exactly the sort of cross-fertilization Provocate goes on and on about. Connecting multiple musical traditions, connecting policy ideas with art … let’s do more!
If you think this sounds interesting, be sure to check out …
The most similar musical performance will probably be Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera on November 21. Of course you can hear other songs form Mexico and Central & South America at Fiesta Indianapolis September 20. Don’t forget, there are dozens of chances to engage on issues of immigrant youth in Indianapolis, here are a few:
- August 29 — Conference about the impact of immigration policy on children and their families
- September 5 — Child sex trafficking and exploitation benefit concert
- September 18 — Conference on Latino domestic violence
- September 26-27 — Campecine, the Latino youth film festival
- October 13 — IUPUI Conference on Mexico and immigration
- October 15 — Refugees from Burma
- October 18 — Understanding Islam in Indiana
- October 23 — “Educational Equity for Indiana’s Latino Students Conference”
- November 16 — Imagining a Global City: Visions of Indianapolis and the World
Know before you go:
You should get to know Gabriela Lena Frank. Here’s a start [read the rest]:
Identity has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own. She writes challenging idiomatic parts for solo instrumentalists, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras.
Maybe a better way to get to know her is by video. Here’s a video about her Joyce Fellowship with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. (It wasn’t until seeing the interview that Provocate realized she must be deaf. Wow.)
You can read what she has to say about the work that will be performed at U Indy:
Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea draws on poetry by the Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002). As a young man, Cuadra spent more than two decades sailing the waters of Lake Nicaragua, meeting peasants, fishermen, sailors, woodcutters, and timber merchants in his travels. From such encounters, he was inspired to construct a cycle of poems that recount the odyssey of a harp-playing mariner, Cifar, who likewise travels the waters of Lake Nicaragua. In my initial reading of the poems, I was struck by how Cuadra writes of commonplace objects and people but ties them to the undercurrents of his country’s past of indigenous folklore. Despite Cuadra’s plain vocabulary, ordinary things are thus rendered mythical, revealing Cifar’s capacity for wonder and passionate lyricism.
Knowing that I had a treasure trove of poetry to spark my composer’s imagination, I sent out to choose a limited selection of poems to set, but it wasn’t long before I knew that I would have to set them all, making for a full evening-length program. In addition, I knew I would have to broaden my vision to include another singer — Cifar, represented by a baritone drawing on traditional Nicaraguan vocal practices, would need a female singer to carry the many women that figure in his life. And finally, while my experience accompanying singers tells me that the piano is an admirable lieder partner, perfectly suited to evoke typical Nicaraguan marimba and guitar sounds, I also know that upon the song cycle’s completion, I will create another version scoring the piano part for full orchestra.
In the end, at Provocate it’s all about the music, so even though it won’t be performed at U Indy, take a listen to this selection from Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout”:
