Latin American Art Music Festival: Prelude

This is great news! The University of Kansas has organized their first Latin American Art Music Festival! I’m writing about this because I’m very excited to be involved. Over the course of the five-day festival, I’ll be having a busy schedule, including talking to the KU entrepreneurship class about the business of music, conducting a …

Pioneers of Musical Pan-Americanism: Dr. Hans Kindler

Born Johannes Hendrikus Philip Kindler, Hans Kindler (1892-1949) was a Dutch-American cellist and conductor. A student of Belgian cellist Jean Gérardy, in 1910 he appeared as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic. However, in spite of a growing reputation on that continent, four years later he left for the United States in order to seek …

In Memoriam Mario Lavista

Last week, we lost one of our hemisphere’s most important composers, Mario Lavista. Born in Mexico City in 1943, he studied with Carlos Chávez, Héctor Quintanar and Rodolfo Halffter. Later, he received a scholarship to study in Europe. In addition to having composed a vast catalog of works for nearly every genre, as an educator …

A Brief Appreciation of Henrique Oswald’s “Ofelia” for Voice and Piano

Background and Analysis. Composed in Florence, Italy, in July 1901, Henrique Oswald’s Ofelia is a five-song setting of poetry in Italian by Solone Monti.1)The titles of the songs are (in order), *******, “Ofelia,” “Il Genio della Foresta,” “L’Angelo del Cimitero,” and “La Morta.” Except for his association with biographer and writer Dame Iris Margaret Origo—Monti …

What Has Happened to Musical Pan-Americanism?

Fifty-nine years ago today, on Sunday, April 23, 1961, at 8:30 p.m., the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet presented a program at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress that consisted of four works that had been written by Latin American composers. All of the works performed were world premieres, and of the four, two had …