Inspired to tell a more genuine story of our Texas border with Mexico, photographer Joel Salcido and writer Oscar Cásares traveled the length of the Rio Grande River, resulting in the series “Postcards From The Border,” which appeared last year in Texas Monthly. Agarita will pair music to these beautiful and poignant images, narrated by Oscar Cásares.
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Program
Joel Salcido Ruiz, Photographer
Oscar Cásares, Writer
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Maurice Ravel | Piano Trio in A minor | Modéré
Carlos Guastavino | Pampamapa
Heinrich Biber | Passacaglia | (arr. solo viola by Walter Lebermann)
Robert Schumann | Widmung (Dedication) | (arr. solo piano by Franz Liszt)
Paul Wiancko | A Sanguine Clockwork
Medley by Agarita, includes:
Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio (Flaco Jiménez)
Red Rose and Dead Rose (Louis Lavatar/Brahms)
Tritsch-Trasch Polka (Johann Strauss)
Lyric Waltz (Dmitri Shostakovich)
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An innovative chamber ensemble dedicated to producing bold, collaborative musical events, Agarita offers a new way to experience classical and contemporary music. Founded by Daniel Anastasio (piano), Marisa Bushman (viola), Ignacio Gallego (cello) and Sarah Silver Manzke (violin), Agarita nourishes the local community through artistic collaborations, community engagement, and free, adventurous programming. With concise, eclectic performances that are “splendid – unified, spirited, [and] well prepared” (Greenberg, Incident Light), the young chamber group offers a new, open-armed experience for listeners.
Rooted in San Antonio, Texas, Agarita works intimately with local artists of various genres to weave cross-artistic narratives for each concert. Agarita’s past collaborations have included the McNay Art Museum’s Pop América exhibit, lighting artist Chuck Drew, Cameron Beauchamp from the Grammy Award-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth, chef Elizabeth Johnson and Pharm Table restaurant, poet Laura Van Prooyen, sculptor Danville Chadbourne, educational arts institution SAY Sí, and the Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival for a concert inside San Antonio’s historic Mission San José.
Joel Salcido Ruiz, photographer
Joel Salcido grew up in Mexico and the United States. As a staff photographer for the El Paso Times he documented the Tarahumara Indians and covered the 1985 earthquake in Mexico. He also traveled extensively in Latin America for USA Today. His photographs appear in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the El Paso Museum of Art, the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Center, and the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
Additional acquisitions have been by the Federal Reserve Bank, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. The photograph Atotonilco el Alto, from his Aliento A Tequila series and book was recently added to Mexico’s National Art Heritage Series. Salcido lives in San Antonio.
Oscar Cáseras, writer
Oscar Cásares is the author of the story collection Brownsville, and the novels Amigoland and Where We Come From, which have earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and most recently, the Guggenheim Foundation. His writing focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, where he grew up and his family began to settle in the mid 1800s. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Texas Monthly, and on National Public Radio. He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Program notes and photograhs
Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio is one of the most well-loved works of chamber music. Its breadth of expression and variety of texture is matched by a lucid structure that links its diverse sections together seamlessly. In this first movement, Ravel draws on a specific Basque dance form, the zortziko, which permeates the movement. His mother was Basque, and one can often hear Basque and Spanish influences in Ravel’s musical language. The start of the work is tentative and anticipatory, but the entry of a hopeful cello solo launches the music into a passionate energy. A developmental section layers intimate lyricism from the strings above foreboding pentatonic harmonies. The return of the first section’s material leads unexpectedly to a major key, and the work ends with a glimmer of hope.
Carlos Guastavino was a 20th-century Argentine composer whose music is tonal, romantic, and relatively conservative given the Modern era in which he lived. His music is nationalistic, and mixes Argentine popular and folk music elements with a compositional rigor found with thegreat European composers of his day, such as Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Debussy, and Albéniz. Song was his most popular form of composition, and the work on this program, Pampamapa, is a song transcribed by Agarita for violin, cello and piano for this occasion. Please find below the lyrics of the song, which is about determination, conviction, and finding strength on a new path.
Originally composed for the violin by Baroque composer Heinrich Biber, this Passacaglia from the 17th century was arranged by violist and composer Walter Lebermann. The main feature of a Baroque passacaglia is the repeating, descending bass line at the beginning of the piece. This permeates the work, and creates a rhythmic and harmonic foundation for the composer to play off of. The calm, lamenting opening leads to more virtuous and vigorous sections that push the expressive and technical limits of the player.
One of the most famous pianists of the 19th century and perhaps ever, Romantic-era composer Franz Liszt transcribed many songs by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann for solo piano. They are beautiful, virtuosic representations of the originals, often keeping much of the original accompaniment at the start and then exploding into Liszt’s own decadent arrangement. The work on this program is Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s Widmung (“Dedication”), a passionate dedication to one’s inspiring love.
Paul Wiancko is a young composer and cellist based in New York City. His unique compositional often incorporates earthy, folk elements that speak with a direct and cutting expression. In A Sanguine Clockwork, the three string instruments engage in an energetic – sometimes playful, sometimes violent – dialogue. About the piece, Wiancko himself writes: The title of this work refers to the intricate, blood-driven inner workings of the human body, as well as the joyful, emotional interconnectedness of human beings on a larger scale. A Sanguine Clockwork explores the relationship between the molecular and the cultural--that inexplicable science which links the sentiment of a well-loved folk song to the blood in our veins.
The final piece on the program is a Medley arranged by Agarita. From a Brahms waltz to a Strauss polka, the arrangement is intended to illustrate the 19th-century German dance influences on the Conjunto music that has become a staple of the Texas border. The pieces include:
Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio (Flaco Jiménez)
Red Rose and Dead Rose (Louis Lavatar/Brahms)
Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka (Johann Strauss)
Lyric Waltz (Dmitri Shostakovich)
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117 Inslee Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78209
agaritachamberplayers@gmail.com
310-980-4971