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Lila Downs. Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin, 2016

Daily News Roundup: 6 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 6 July 2016 Choral, Contemporary, Mainstream Jazz, Piano, Romantic, Scena Jazz, World Music

+ Cleveland Classical talks with guitarist Denis Azabagić about winning prizes, his wife and duo partner flautist Eugenia Moliner, and practice philosophy. “I remember when I came to the U.S. more than a decade ago. I opened the yellow pages and found an ad that said, ‘Learn to play the piano without practice.’ I thought, who in the world could put out such an ad? I mean how can you lie like that — because that’s impossible. We would all like to get our things in life the easy way, but music is something that certainly doesn’t happen like that.…

Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

“When you sing, I can’t die, I live forever” Lila Downs at the FIJM

By Camilo Lanfranco on 6 July 2016 Concert Reviews, Experimental Jazz, Folk, Popular Music, Scena Jazz, World Music

Lila Downs performed last Saturday night at the Métropolis theatre for the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Close to 2,000 fans gathered to see the singer-songwriter and her band perform a repertoire of Mexican rhythms fused with jazz instruments and players. It was precisely because of this capacity for mixing styles, while remaining true to her cultural roots, that she received the 2016 Antonio Carlos Jobim award as “an artist distinguished in the field of world music whose influence on the evolution of jazz and cultural crossover is widely recognized.” These cultural and musical crossovers are an important part of Lila Downs’s…

“Mozart was born in New Orleans!” Paquito D’Rivera at FMCM Review

By Camilo Lanfranco on 19 June 2016 Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz, World Music

“The most beautiful piece written for the clarinet is Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major and we did a study on it at the Louisiana University of Jazz with my friend Wynton Marsalis… We arrived to the conclusion that Mozart was not from Austria, he is from the New Orleans! And that the right way to play Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major is as a blues, in fact, a New Orleans blues!” —Paquito D’Rivera, Pollack Hall, 17 June 2016 Winner of 14 Grammy Awards with a discography of more than 30 solo albums since he first started his career…

This Day in Music – 1881 Bela Bartok was born

By Camilo Lanfranco on 25 March 2016 Folk, This Day in Music, World Music

135 Years ago this day, March 25th 1881, Bela Bartok was born. Regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest composers, Bela had a musical curiosity that would change the way the West sees and understands music. He was in his early 30s when he decided to pack the most modern recording instrument of the time, the Edison Phonograph, and head to Algeria to research Arab Folk Music. Originally Bela was set to go alone, but it the last minute he suggested Marta (wife) to join him. And off they went. They traveled from Marseille to the port of Sakîkdah in Algeria…

Maestro Huang Feili and the Rise of the Chinese Conductor

By Paul E. Robinson on 6 June 2012 Concert Reviews, World Music

by Paul E. RobinsonIn March 2009, I was a Guest Lecturer at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing, China. My audience was a class of young conductors. My lecture, titled “Stokowski: the Limits of Interpretation,” considered the many changes that Stokowski had made in the scores of the music he conducted and how these changes might be defended and justified. Moments before my talk was to begin, I had a distinguished surprise visitor, 92-year old Huang Feili, (photo: left) the man who had founded the conducting department of this institution back in 1956. His presence not only did me great honour, but gave me great…

Austin Symphony Celebrates Mexico!

By Paul E. Robinson on 23 November 2010 Orchestral, World Music

by Paul E. RobinsonLast weekend (November 19 and 20) the Austin Symphony under music director Peter Bay presented an all-Mexican programme. And there was a good reason for it. This year, Mexico is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its independence, and the 100th anniversary of its revolution. A big year for Mexico and President Calderon duly named it “Año de la Patria.”Surprisingly, given the inspiration for this concert, there was virtually nothing in the programme book to let the audience know what it was all about. All we got were the cryptic words “Mexico’s 200/100” on the main programme page.…

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