A forum for the appreciation of all things related to the classical music of Latin America.
Had a great rehearsal with the KU music students last night! Though they may not know this, they are now the “Kansas version” of the Cayambis Sinfonietta. Together, we’ll be performing four pieces from the Americas: Victor Herbert’s Panamericana, Oscar Lorenzo Fernández’s Batuque, O Garatuja by Alberto Nepomuceno, and Alfonso Leng’s La muerte de Alsino. …
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 …
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 …
A pioneer may, in fact, be someone who does not or did not garner very much attention at all. It could be a person who, though not necessarily a leader or prominent individual, nevertheless made notable contributions or advancements in his or her field. Leila Fern Thompson was such a person. While working from the …
Paul Herman Apel was born in 1882 in the central German city of Gottingen. Departing from Hamburg, Germany, on board the S. S. Pretoria, he arrived in New York City on May 7, 1899. The passenger manifest noted that Apel’s ticket had been purchased by his mother, Antoinette Apel, and that his final destination was …
Born into a wealthy family on November 7, 1875, Eleanor Hague studied privately in Italy and France. During the first decade of the 20th century, she was a member of the People’s Choral Union in New York (formed in 1897 by Dr. Frank Damrosch) in which she assisted in the work of instruction. Later, she …
We recently returned from Quito, Ecuador, where we met with several of our composers and other musicians. But as we walked around that city, it was difficult not to notice how the city streets were seemingly being dominated by Chinese cars. In fact, on one day, on our way walking to a nearby shopping center, …
In 1941, two U.S. musicians, Aaron Copland and Nicolas Slonimsky, headed off to Latin America on official missions. The latter, sent out by the Fleisher Music Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, was entrusted with three missions, of which the first was to collect orchestral scores that would subsequently be copied under a Works …
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 …
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 …