Southwest Chamber Music continues its vibrant association with the musical life of Mexico with its
newest album, Aroma Foliado. A musical portrait of composer Gabriela Ortiz, five important works are represented from her colorful and diverse output ranging from 1991 to 2010. Funded by Mexico's FONCA, Aroma Foliado is a unique and rare collaboration between a Mexican composer and an
American ensemble.
The disc includes vocal soloists baritone Evan Hughes singing Rio Bravo and four sopranos in Ortiz's deeply moving Elegia: Elissa Johnston, Sharon Harms, Laura Mercado-Wright and Ayana Haviv. Inspired by a string quartet by Mozart, the title track of the album is Aroma Foliado which alternates from dream seqeunces to pounding Mexican rhythms. Two works celebrate the rivers flowing through Mexican culture. Río Bravo for baritone is accompanied by 6 carefully tuned cystal wine goblets and solo violinist Lorenz Gamma. The legendary Mexican river Papaloapan inspires the magical sonorities of two harps and steel drum in Río de las Mariposas. The disc concludes with the aerobic athleticism of Atlas Pumas, a recreation of a major soccer match for violin and marimba, excitingly performed by Shalini Vijayan and Lynn Vartan.
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I have admired the music of Gabriela Ortiz for many years. When she approached me with the idea that she would like Southwest Chamber Music to record a CD of her music, it was a very easy question to answer. And she added the practical step that she would do the work securing the funds from FONCA in Mexico City. With fingers crossed we waited until the good news came in October of 2011 that we could proceed from dream to reality. Here was the perfect project to move our musical relationship with Mexico forward into the contemporary music world of the country after Southwest’s considerable success performing, recording and touring in Mexico with the complete chamber music of Carlos Chávez and our long term association with its fantastic percussion ensemble, Tambuco.
Working with Gabriela has been a performer’s dream of cooperation. She sent me a treasure trove of scores for me to consider, with each piece worthy of recording. I have to thank her for accepting my artistic recommendations that shape this CD. When I stretched her own concept away from one piece she had planned towards her Elegía I struck a nerve. It was a dream of hers that this work in honor of the premature death of her mother would be part of an eventual recording and she easily changed her mind to accept my suggestion. From my perspective the disc needed a capstone dramatic statement which Elegía provides. Honoring the shared human sadness for lost mothers everywhere, it is a masterwork that had an immediate physical impact when I first read the score. Southwest had Aroma Foliado and Atlas Pumas in its repertory so those two works were catalysts to the project. When I suggested baritone Evan Hughes for Rio Bravo she accepted the change of voice timbre from her original idea of a contralto, and the results are stunning in intensity. The dreamlike otherworldly sonorities of two harps and steel drum in the Rio de las Mariposas round out for me an extremely satisfying portrait of one of finest composers of our time.
Jeff von der Schmidt, Artistic Director
Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today, and one of the most vibrant musicians emerging in the international scene. Her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways.
Her compositions are credited for being both entertaining and immediate as well as profound and sophisticated; she achieves a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity. Although based in Mexico, her music is commission and performed all over the world.
Her music has been played by prestigious ensembles, soloists and orchestras such as: Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, The Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra, Zoltan Kocsis, Sara Leonard, Alejandro Escuer, Onix Ensemble, Tambuco Percussion Quartet, The Mexican University Philharmonic Orchestra, La Camerata Chamber Players, Mexico City's Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony, Mälmo Symphony Orchestra and Southwest Chamber Music, among others.
Ortiz has been honored with that Civitella Ranieri Artistic Residency; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Fulbright Fellowship; the Distinción Universidad Nacional; the First Prize of the Silvestre Revueltas National Chamber Music Competition with her piece Altar de Muertos (a work commissioned by the Kronos Quartet); The First Prize at the Alicia Urreta Composition Competition; the Composers Award and the National Artists System Fellowship from the Mexican Council for the Arts and Culture; Banff Center for the Arts Residency; the Inroads Commission, a Program of Arts International with funds from the Ford Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Mozart Medal Award for Mexican Theater and Music as the best composer of 1997 and the Fundación Cultural Bancomer Award.
In 1994 she wrote the music for the choreographic work Errant Manoeuvres performed by the Emma Diamond Dance Company at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York and in 1995 she completed the music score for the award-winning film Frontierland, produced and directed by Rubén Ortiz and Jesse Lerner. In 2000 she returned to film music with the music score for the Mexican film Por la Libre produced by Altavista films and directed by Juan Carlos de Llaca.
Born in Mexico City, her parents were musicians In the famous folk music ensemble Los Folkloristas, which was founded in 1966 to preserve and record the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. She trained with the eminent composer Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music and Federico Ibarra at the National University of Mexico. In 1990 she was awarded the British Council Fellowship to study in London with Robert Sexton at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
In 1992 she received the University of Mexico Scholarship to complete Ph.D. studies in electro acoustic music composition with Simon Emmerson at The City University in London. She currently teaches composition at the Mexican University of Mexico City, and previously taught at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
More information is available at www.GabrielaOrtiz.com.
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AROMA FOLIADO CD |
1 |
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Elegía |
15:38 |
2 |
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Aroma Foliado |
14:23 |
3 |
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Río Bravo
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9:45 |
4 |
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Río de las Mariposas |
9:22 |
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Atlas Pumas |
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5. Vivo Enérgico e Molto Rítmico |
3:10 |
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6. Leggiero con Fantasía |
5:50 |
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7. Vivo Enérgico e Molto Rítmico |
4:34 |
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