Latin American Music Feature of Keene State Concert
KEENE, N.H. 11/13/01 - Music from Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Peru will be performed by the Keene State College Guitar Orchestra and Latin American Ensemble on Wednesday, Nov. 28. Musicians will perform using panpipes, charangos, guitars, and indigenous percussion instruments. Works by J.S. Bach, George Handel, Laurindo Almeida, and Leo Brouwer will be played during the concert, which starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall of the Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for KSC students, senior citizens, and youth 17 and under. Call the Box Office at 603-358-2168.
José Lezcano, professor of music, directs the nine-member KSC Guitar Orchestra and the 23 students in the Latin American Ensemble. Lezcano’s composition “Cuban Sketches” for flutes, guitar, and percussion, will be played featuring flutists Leah Kisselbrack, Katrina Gatti, and Nichole Nelson. The trio will perform solos during “El arrullo de palmas,” a bolero by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. The Latin Ensemble portion of the program also will feature vocal solos by sopranos Jung Jin Choi and Erin Dineen during Cuban works.
The KSC Guitar Orchestra will perform a movement from contemporary Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s “Acerca del Cielo, el Aire, y la Sonrisa” (“Near the Sky, the Air, and the Smile.”) This is a work for eight guitars incorporating extended sound resources such as bottle-slide, slap-pizzicato, and other effects.
Other works on the orchestra’s program include transcriptions by Bach and Handel, and “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson. The orchestra also will perform movements from Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida’s “Los Angeles Aquarelle Suite,” which pays tribute to various Los Angeles landmarks and neighborhoods including Beverly Hills, San Fernando Mission, and Harbor Freeway.
The concert will close with the popular folk tune, “Guantanamera” with the combined Latin Ensemble and Guitar Orchestra.
Lezcano, a Cuban-born guitarist, composer, and folklorist, teaches music theory and Latin American music at Keene State. His programs of traditional guitar repertory and Andean music have taken him from Carnegie Recital Hall to major festivals in Quito, Lima, and Rio de Janeiro, as recitalist, collaborative musician, and soloist with orchestra.
He has received numerous national prizes and awards, including the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National Guitar Competition (1983) and a Fulbright Award (1999) to Ecuador to teach, perform, and pursue research on indigenous guitar traditions. Lezcano has received additional funding for research from the Whiting Foundation and KSC, has published his research in scholarly journals and encyclopedias, and lectures for the New Hampshire Humanities Council.
