Estaciones

Ideograms are modes of writing, forms of representation of abstract ideas through signs that by convention acquire specific meanings. This is how Japan, southern Nigeria, or China have developed their written expression, with drawings that represent ideas. In this recording project, each work represents a particular vision, a unique and personal sound-world characterized by greatly contrasting aesthetics, some focused on timbre research and others more on the expansion of post-tonal, neo-tonal, modal and atonal discourses, with influences of world music; this project is a sampling of the eclecticism pervading contemporary concert music today. With Ideogramas, ONIX celebrates the multiculturality and aesthetic openness of such diversity in a project that presents to the public the music of eight young Mexican composers for the first time.

The pieces on this album explore three different approaches to the voice as a musical instrument. Las Hojas Secas (The Dry Leaves) is a song cycle for soprano and piano. Poetry by Jose Juan Tablada was the inspiration for the piece. Dos Danzas para un principio (Two Dances for a Beginning) is a work for choir, brass, and percussion, and is based on the composer’s own texts. Reflejo (Reflection) is composed for women’s sextet, and is also based on text by the composer.

Bestiario

Containing 12 pieces by young Latin American composers, FLUX is a project from the Nucleo Integral de Composicion and Urtext Digital Classics. The results or the first Electroacoustic Composition Workshop taught at NICO, these pieces were written especially for Alejandro Escuer, a world-renowned Mexican flutist. This workshop took the young composers through the entire process, from conception, to notation, to concert, and even the recordings were taken then.

Either through Ruiz Armengol’s travels to Cuba, or Cuban musicians visiting Mexico, he met a number of musicians from Cuba; among the more notable were René Touzet, César Portillo de la Luz, and José Antonio Méndez. The last two composers, along with Ruiz Armengol and Mexican songwriter Vicente Garrido, are considered to be the leaders of the bolero filin, a Latin song style that became popular both in Mexico and Cuba during the 1950s and 60s. The Cuban bolero is a binary song style, derived from the danzón and habanera, which is characterized by long flowing melodies and was brought to Mexico by Cuban entertainers. Ruiz Armengol encouraged by René Touzet embraced the composition of his first set of Cuban dances over a span of eleven years. The first nineteen Cuban dances were composed between 1979 and 1991. The last three Cuban dances, written in 2001 and remain unpublished. Ruiz Armengol’s innovations in the Cuban dance genre in the areas of form, harmonic originality, rhythmic variety, aesthetic content, and pianistic brilliance, suggest a unique contribution in the history of the genre. Arguably, time is the greatest test of a composer’s merit and his Cuban Dances appear to be on the winning side of this test, as evidenced by the interest in his music by performers and audiences. 

Pianist Martín Camacho has won eighteen national and local competitions in Mexico, Cuba and the United States. He has performed extensively as a recitalist in Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Japan, Italy, Serbia, Croatia and Norway, as well as in more than 20 cities in the United States and Canada. He has performed as a soloist with some of the most important symphony orchestras in Mexico and Cuba; and in more than 15 cities in the United States and Canada. Camacho's experience in Mexican, Cuban and Latin American music has led him to give several presentations, lectures and recitals at national and international conferences. In 2009 he performed his debut recital at Carnegie Hall to great acclaim in front of a full house. Dr. Camacho completed his doctoral studies (2006) at the University of Miami. He began his piano studies in Mexico City at the Escuela Superior de Música, and continued his studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, where he obtained a Bachelor of Music degree (1993). He obtained a Master of Music degree (1998) and a Diploma of Professional Studies (2000) at the Cleveland Institute of Music, under the direction of pianist Sergei Babayan.

Fury and Silence is a project that involves composers and performers who felt the need to express a particular vision of our immediate reality with force and clarity. Each one of them presents a different sound metaphor, of the composer’s reaction to a very harsh and possibly little known reality of our country. They are the representation of the incredulous astonishment of our times and the impact of inconceivable and absurd facts. Therefore, with a lump in everyone’s throat, these works are necessarily of the kind whose evocative power could do justice to the irrepressible chant and testimony of an ever-present fury. A kind of music that could transcend its own acoustic existence and, in so doing, fix injuries, and enlighten the memory followed by a very loud, most touching and hopeful… silence.

Estudios BOP

Yépez: Creationem

Endekaleidos is the second collaboration between the Integrated Composition Nucleus school (NICO) and the Urtext Digital Classics label. Containing eleven works written by young Latin American composers, the pieces are the result of the first workshop for percussion quartet taught at NICO and were written especially for Tambuco, the world renowned Mexican percussion ensemble. Engaging in a bit of wordplay and combining the Greek roots for 'ende' meaning an eleven syllable word with 'kaleidoscope', Endekaleidos a term coined for this album is indeed a collection of eleven beautiful images.

Tetraktys

Miramontes: Estudios, Escenas Infantiles & Arrulladoras

Collectors of the late-Romantic Mexican opera and song composer Arnulfo Miramontes (1882-1960) will be delighted with this release, as recordings of his works are so rarely found, despite the popularity of the songs such as the "Serenata" from his opera "Anahuac" and "Las hojas caen" ("The leaves fall"). Soprano Laura Pérez Rosillo accompanied by pianist Bernardo Jiménez Casillas perform these lyrical songs that, though rare, are at once melodiously memorable. - Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic.com

Uruguayan / Mexican pianist Edison Quintana undertook a di¬fficult task on this production: to put together on one single recording twelve different composers belonging to the most rapid period of change in Mexican music. • The works he chose are all by Mexican composers from 1890-1980; however, this is not just a simple chronological piano collection but an intelligent, sensitively presented selection allowing for the appreciation of how these musicians faced and solved the challenges of the new dodecaphonic world. • Among the dozen composers featured are Manuel Ponce and Silvestre Revueltas.

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REVIEW:

This wide-ranging program demonstrates the stylistic variety of Mexican piano music from 1890–1980. Pianist Edison Quintana manages the many idioms with clarity and unwavering musicianship.

– American Record Guide

Saxtlán