Art Song Colorado and the Denver Art Song Project will release their new album El Rebelde on August 5, 2022, and celebrate the new recording with a live-streamed performance in Boulder, CO. The album features complete world premiere recordings of works by Gabriela Lena Frank, as well as Spanish Songs by Dmitri Shostakovich, performed by tenor Javier Abreu, baritone Andrew Garland, and pianist Jeremy Reger.
Frank's Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea draws on poetry by the Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002). As a young man, Cuadra spent more than two decades sailing the waters of Lake Nicaragua, meeting peasants, fishermen, sailors, woodcutters, and timber merchants in his travels. From such encounters, he was inspired to construct a cycle of poems that recount the odyssey of a harp-playing mariner Cifar, who likewise travels the waters of Lake Nicaragua.
The Five Moons of Lorca utilizes an original text by playwright Nilo Cruz (b. 1960), which lyrically describes the shooting death of dramatist Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) at the hands of Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Hints of Spanish folksong, which García Lorca passionately championed contrary to the decree of the Franco dictatorship, are featured throughout. Frank and Cruz's first opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego, premieres at San Diego Opera October 29, 2022, and will be staged at San Francisco Opera June 13, 2023.
Also on the album is Frank's Cuatro Canciones Andinas on Indian poetry collected and translated by the folklorist and poet José María Arguedas (1911-1969) from Quechua into Spanish.
Spanish Songs by Shostakovich is inspired by Spanish folk tunes, and uses text from a volume of Spanish poems, translated into Russian by Sergey Bolotin and Tatyana Sikorskaya.
Performance Details
Live-Streamed Album Launch Party
Art Song Colorado
CU Boulder
Boulder, CO
Friday, August 5, 2020
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