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Two-time GRAMMY-winner Southwest Chamber Music and Cambria Master Recordings are proud to release the first complete recording of the chamber music of Carlos Chávez. The first two releases of this cycle have earned unprecedented consecutive Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Volume 1 received a 2003 Grammy Award for the Suite for Double Quartet from “The Daughter of Colchis,” a ballet written for Martha Graham. Volume 2 received a 2004 Grammy Award for the first CD recordings of the complete Soli, Energía from the 1920s, and the melodious Sonata for Four Horns. Volume 3, recipient of three Grammy nominations including “Best Classical Album” of 2005, features the complete music for percussion, with Southwest Chamber Music joined by the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble of Mexico City, and the complete music for voice and instruments with Alba Quezada and Suzanna Gúzman. Volume 4, featuring the complete music for strings and piano, received a Latin Grammy nomination for 2007 “Best Classical Album.” The completion of Chávez Cycle in 2006 celebrated the 20th Anniversary Season of Southwest Chamber Music. Read more...

Carlos Chávez
One of the founding fathers of musical life in Mexico, Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) was part of the amazing group of musicians, painters, and poets working in the 1920s and 1930s who forged what is today internationally recognized as the Mexican cultural identity. Ironically, the great Mexican composer was not interested in nationalistic music per se; the aesthetic quality was the most important issue in art for Chávez. “What is important is good music. Unless it is good, nationalistic music is worthless. Good music can be created only by good composers... For a country to have great national music, the only thing missing is the great composers to create it.”

Ana Chávez, the composers’ daughter, has graciously given Southwest Chamber Music permission to illustrate these performances and recordings of her father’s music with portraits of Chávez never seen outside of her family. There are two be Diego Rivera (from 1932 and 1946), and one each by David Alfaro Siquieros (1947) and Rufino Tamayo (undated, but probably from the late 1960s to early 70s). These portrait drawings have not been seen outside of the Chávez family according to Mrs. Chávez, who remembers, for example, Rivera presenting one of these drawings to her father on the occasion of his birthday party in 1946.