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Tag: Latin American Music

Julián Orbón Composer of Four Worlds

Julián Orbón was a composer with his feet in four worlds.

In 1925, one hundred years ago today, he was born in Avilés, Spain. As a child, he studied music with his father, composer Benjamin Orbón. At 10, he entered the Oviedo Conservatory to begin his formal training.

When he was 13, the family moved to Cuba. There Orbon studied with José Ardévol, with whom he assembled a group of aspiring young composers, Grupo de Renovación, whose mission it was to promote new Cuban music. He was still in his teens when he stepped up to take over the direction of the then only recently-established Orbón Conservatory, following his father’s death.

Not long after, he won a scholarship to study composition with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. Afterward, he returned to his position at the conservatory until the Cuban Revolution began in 1953. In 1960, he left Cuba permanently, to teach at Mexico City’s National Conservatory of Music alongside Carlos Chávez.

In 1963, he moved to the United States, where he taught at Lenox College, Washington University in St. Louis, Barnard College, and the Hispanic Institute of Columbia University.

For the rest of his life, he made New York his home. He died in Miami while undergoing cancer treatment in 1991.

Orbón’s experiences in four countries allowed him to assimilate many influences in his music: Spanish, Cuban (and by extension Afro-Cuban), American, Gregorian chant, neoclassicism, and a kind of melancholy romanticism shaped by the collapse of his world during the Cuban Revolution. He was friendly with Copland, Chávez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, all of whose music he clearly admired.

His own music is attractive, personal, and accessible. It’s a mystery why it isn’t heard more often. Like many composers of his generation, he seems to have fallen through the cracks between the classics and the new. A pity, because one could do worse than to program any of the pieces below.

¡Feliz centésimo, Julian Orbon!

Danzas sinfónicas (1955)

Tres versiones sinfónicas (1953)

Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and Orchestra (1958)

August 7, 2025
Enrique Bátiz obituary: Latin American Music Icon

Another figure from the glory days of classical radio has died. When the classical record scene was still strong and the major labels were in good hands, Enrique Bátiz was one of those conductors whose name and artistry were encountered quite frequently. He made many fine records for EMI and later ASV. In particular, I cherish his album of works by Joaquín Turina (including the “Danzas fantásticas” and “Sinfonia sevillana”), Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” with pianist Aldo Ciccolini, a lovely Villa-Lobos program with Barbara Hendricks, the Manuel Ponce Violin Concerto with Henryk Szeryng (the work’s dedicatee), and the indispensable 4-disc “Rodrigo Edition,” released on EMI (a label whose catalogue has since been devoured by Warner).

He continued to promote his country’s music with missionary zeal through ASV’s “Musica Mexicana” series. I also turn frequently to a fun album he made for Naxos, “Latin American Classics,” released in 1994. It’s a veritable banquet of brief, delectable tracks easily assimilated into my radio shows. Before the proliferation of high-quality independent labels, readier access to imports, and of course the internet, Bátiz’s records of Spanish and Latin American music were like El Dorado gold.

In all, he made some 145 recordings. I confess with a degree of guilt that I am not really all that familiar with most of those that document repertoire outside Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. He was justly celebrated as an ambassador for Latin music, but he also recorded his share of the standard repertoire, including a Beethoven cycle. I am unqualified to weigh in on most of it, though I do remember being surprised by the interpretative quality of his Rimsky-Korsakov. Mexico is an awfully long way from Russia (or so Leon Trotsky thought), but why not? Bátiz was every bit as capable as his U.S., British, and Continental brethren, who were less likely to be a pigeon-holed because of their nationalities.

Bátiz died yesterday at the age of 82. Gracias, Maestro. Que descanse en paz.

Turina, “Sinfonia sevillana”

Rodrigo, “Concierto Serenata” for harp and orchestra

Ponce, Violin Concerto

Villa-Lobos

Buxtehude (arranged by Carlos Chávez), Chaconne in E minor

March 31, 2025
Latin American Music Getaway on KWAX

With more snow and frigid temperatures on the way – at least where I’m typing, here in the Mid-Atlantic United States – I’m thinking it might be cheering for some to reflect that it’s actually summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Who am I to deny the pleasure? This week on “Sweetness and Light,” I invite you to think warm thoughts as we take a musical journey to Latin America.

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru will be represented in works by Agustín Barrios, Theodoro Valcárcel Caballero, Camargo Guarnieri, Astor Piazzolla, and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

We’ll cap the hour back in New York with more cowbell and Morton Gould’s vibrant “Latin-American Symphonette.”

Join the conga line. It’s a South American getaway on “Sweetness Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 18, 2025
Sinfonietta Nova Latin Concert Princeton NJ

As the orchestra tunes for its final concert of the season, Sinfonietta Nova’s dance card is nearly full.

The West Windsor-based community ensemble is about to conclude its 2018-19 series, devoted to the dance, with a concert on Latin American themes. The program will be presented on May 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the orchestra’s home, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church – NJ in Princeton Junction.

Musical selections will include Arturo Márquez’s “Danzón No. 2,” Ernesto Lecuona’s “Malagueña,” Astor Piazzolla’s “Tangazo,” and Morton Gould’s rousing “Latin American Symphonette.”

Violinist Denise Dillenbeck will join the orchestra for the “Havanaise” by Camille Saint-Saëns and a special encore.

You can find out more in my interview with – and profile of – Sinfonietta Nova’s music director, Gail Hsui-Wen Lee, in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today.

https://princetoninfo.com/sinfonietta-nova-brings-latin-flair-to-season-finale/

May 1, 2019
Cabin Fever Escape Latin American Music

Snowbound? Already suffering the terrors of cabin fever?

Tune in to The Classical Network for today’s Noontime Concert and be transported, as I am joined by Mimi Stillman, flutist and artistic director of the Dolce Suono Ensemble. Mimi will be our tour guide for a conflation of two concerts in DSE’s ongoing “The Americas Project/Música en tus Manos,” explorations of chamber music of Latin America and the United States.

The program will feature music from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and the U.S., with a work by Philadelphia composer Andrea Clearfield. We’ll also take a musical journey to Hawaii with the world premiere of Michael-Thomas Fumai’s “Manookian Murals,” a DSE commission. Each movement was inspired by a mural of artist Arman Tateos Manookian (1904-1931) Painter of Hawaii. We’ll hear “Red Sails,” “The Arrival of Captain Cook,” “Hawaiian Boy and Girl,” and “Flight of the Flamingos.”

“Música en tus Manos” (literally, “Music in Your Hands”) brings DSE together with partner organizations for engagement initiatives with Philadelphia’s Latino community. You can learn more about the project, as well as DSE’s upcoming concerts in Bryn Mawr (on March 17) and Philadelphia (on March 21, with Philadelphia Orchestra principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales) at dolcesuono.com.

Put away your snow blower and mix up the margaritas and Mai Tais. We’re headed to warmer climes on today’s Noontime Concert, with Mimi Stillman and the Dolce Suono Ensemble, beginning at 12:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

IMAGE: Arman Manookian’s “Hawaiian Boy and Girl”

March 14, 2017

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