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Tag: Mexican Composer

Mario Lavista 1943-2023 Mexican Composer

Hasta la vista.

Mario Lavista, the much-decorated Mexican composer, died yesterday at the age of 78.

Lavista was born in Mexico City in 1943. He studied with Carlos Chávez and Jean-Étienne Marie, receiving additional instruction from Rodolfo Halffter, Nadia Boulanger, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. He experimented with improvisation and electronic music, and applied that same curiosity in his quest for unusual timbres employing acoustic instruments and extended techniques. He founded and edited Pauta, one of the most significant music journals in Latin America. His sacred music was influenced by Medieval and Renaissance procedures. He also composed for theater and film.

Lavista’s music is imaginative, beautiful and transporting. Gracias, Maestro, y que descanse en paz.

“Cuaderno de viaje” for solo violin

“Clepsidra” for orchestra

“Danza Isorritmica” for percussion ensemble

“Reflejos de la Noche” for string quartet

“Maithuna” for voice and percussion

“Responsorio In Memoriam Rodolfo Halffter” for bassoon, bass drums, and tubular bells

Lavista plays “Jaula” on a prepared piano. Music begins at 1:36.

November 5, 2021
Celebrating Carlos Chávez Birthday Today

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Carlos Chávez!

Join me this afternoon on The Classical Network, as I celebrate the birthday today of Mexico’s foremost composer and conductor. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, Chávez (1899-1978) appeared like Quetzalcoatl, the creator-deity of Aztec lore, to forge a distinctive sound in Mexican music.

He became director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Mexicana, the country’s first permanent symphony orchestra. He was appointed director of the National Conservatory of Music. Later, he served as director-general of the National Institute of Fine Arts. At the same time, he formed the National Symphony Orchestra, which supplanted the old OSM.

In 1937, he conducted the world premiere of “El Salón México,” the work which essentially launched Aaron Copland into the mainstream.

Chávez himself was one of the first exponents of Mexican nationalism in music, writing ballets on Aztec themes. His most famous work is probably the Symphony No. 2, composed in 1935-36. Known as the “Sinfonia India,” it is based on melodies by indigenous tribes of northern Mexico.

The percussion section originally included a large number of traditional Mexican instruments, including the jicara de agua (half of a gourd inverted and partly submerged in a basin of water, struck with sticks), güiro, cascabeles (a pellet rattle), tenabari (a string of butterfly cocoons), a pair of teponaxtles, tlapanhuéhuetl, and grijutian (a string of deer hooves).

However, when the score was published, the composer sensibly substituted the nearest equivalents commonly used by most orchestras, though he requested that the originals be employed wherever possible. We’ll hear the work this afternoon in the 3:00 hour.

At noon today, The Classical Network will continue its partnership with Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS), with a concert from Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in midtown Manhattan. The program of “Italian Jewels” will feature Nina Stern, recorder, Jeffrey Grossman, harpsichord, and Stephanie Corwin, bassoon, in music by Giovanni Battista Fontana, Tarquinio Merula, Arcangelo Corelli, and Antoniio Vivaldi.

It’s music from the Old World and the New, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 13, 2017
Bard Salutes Mexican Composer Carlos Chávez

In a development that promises to be as enlightening as it is mildly disorienting, a drive north this weekend will lead you “south of the border.”

Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), regarded by many as Mexico’s foremost composer and conductor, will be the focus of this year’s Bard Music Festival, which begins today at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

For the next two weeks, Bard will bring together crackerjack artists (an impressive number of them on the Bard Conservatory faculty), leading musicologists, and appreciative audiences to celebrate music of the Americas, with an unusual focus on underplayed music of Mexico and South America.

Among the featured performers will be Princeton University’s ensemble-in-residence, So Percussion, which will appear on a concert of music by Chávez, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Amadeo Roldán, and Colin McPhee, on August 14.

Chávez is a fascinating figure, whose influence cannot be underestimated. His own works are divided between nationalistic utterances, pitched to the people, and more cosmopolitan, modernist experiments. His most famous bit of populism is his Symphony No. 2, the “Sinfonia India,” based on melodies by indigenous tribes of northern Mexico. The piece will be heard at Bard on August 15, alongside works by Latin American powerhouses Heitor Villa-Lobos, Silvestre Revueltas, and José Pablo Moncayo.

In 1937, Chávez conducted the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s “El Salón México,” which essentially launched Copland into the mainstream.

As always with the Bard festival, a tie-in book of scholarly essays, “Carlos Chávez and His World,” is being issued by Princeton University Press.

Read more about this amazing, total immersion in the composer’s life and work in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/08/bard_music_festival_focuses_on.html

August 7, 2015

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