Post by erik on Jul 15, 2023 20:48:30 GMT -5
The contemporary female American composer Gabriela Lena Frank is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight with an ethnic masterpiece of the 21st century.
Gabriela Lena Frank: THREE LATIN AMERICAN DANCES
Many of today’s great American composers have a polyglot ethnic and racial background; and this is certainly true for Gabriela Lena Frank. Born in 1972 in Berkeley, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Frank is Lithuanian and Jewish on her father’s side, and Chinese and Peruvian on her mother’s side. Each of these elements figures into her style of composition, which often features plenty of indigenous elements. Such is the case with her 2004 work “Three Latin American Dances”. Borrowing its title (perhaps unintentionally) from Aaron Copland’s “Three Latin American Sketches”, the three-movement work weaves a tapestry of Latin American influences in a way that connects the ancient with the modern. The opening “Jungle Jaunt” takes its cue from the Symphonic Dances that Leonard Bernstein had assembled for West Side Story, and then weaves in Pan-Amazonian dance forms. The second movement, entitled “Highland Harawi”, evokes the music of the Peruvian Andes; and the third and final movement, “The Mestizo Waltz”, is a tribute to the mixed-race music of the Pacific coastline of South America. The exotic intensity of the work puts it up there with the ethnic orchestral works of other contemporaries like Roberto Sierra (Symphony No. 3), Arturo Marquez (“Danzon No. 2”; “Conga Del Fuego Nuevo”) that take their cues from Latin and indigenous music. “Three Latin American Dances” received its enthusiastic premiere in Salt Lake City in early 2004, where the Utah Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Keith Lockhart, performed and recorded it, along with Bernstein’s West Side Story suite and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances.
Utah Symphony Orchestra/KEITH LOCKHART (Reference)
Included:
Leonard Bernstein: SYMPHONIC DANCES FROM “WEST SIDE STORY”
Rachmaninoff: SYMPHONIC DANCES, OP. 45
Gabriela Lena Frank: THREE LATIN AMERICAN DANCES
Many of today’s great American composers have a polyglot ethnic and racial background; and this is certainly true for Gabriela Lena Frank. Born in 1972 in Berkeley, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Frank is Lithuanian and Jewish on her father’s side, and Chinese and Peruvian on her mother’s side. Each of these elements figures into her style of composition, which often features plenty of indigenous elements. Such is the case with her 2004 work “Three Latin American Dances”. Borrowing its title (perhaps unintentionally) from Aaron Copland’s “Three Latin American Sketches”, the three-movement work weaves a tapestry of Latin American influences in a way that connects the ancient with the modern. The opening “Jungle Jaunt” takes its cue from the Symphonic Dances that Leonard Bernstein had assembled for West Side Story, and then weaves in Pan-Amazonian dance forms. The second movement, entitled “Highland Harawi”, evokes the music of the Peruvian Andes; and the third and final movement, “The Mestizo Waltz”, is a tribute to the mixed-race music of the Pacific coastline of South America. The exotic intensity of the work puts it up there with the ethnic orchestral works of other contemporaries like Roberto Sierra (Symphony No. 3), Arturo Marquez (“Danzon No. 2”; “Conga Del Fuego Nuevo”) that take their cues from Latin and indigenous music. “Three Latin American Dances” received its enthusiastic premiere in Salt Lake City in early 2004, where the Utah Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Keith Lockhart, performed and recorded it, along with Bernstein’s West Side Story suite and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances.
Utah Symphony Orchestra/KEITH LOCKHART (Reference)
Included:
Leonard Bernstein: SYMPHONIC DANCES FROM “WEST SIDE STORY”
Rachmaninoff: SYMPHONIC DANCES, OP. 45