A Grammy-nominated composer and one of the worlds leading tenors will premiere the fifth new work in the 做厙勛圖 Desert Song Festivals Wesley Green Composing Project.
Peruvian composer will be in the audience when tenor and his longtime accompanist perform the world premiere of Quiet Poems at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15. The recital, presented by , closes out the winter leg of the 2024 .
I think the piece has something important to say both musically and in terms of the text, and I think that Michael is just the ideal vehicle for this piece, L籀pez said during a phone interview last week from his San Francisco area home.
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Quiet Poems reunites L籀pez with his go-to librettist Nilo Cruz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban playwright with whom he collaborated on two of his defining works: his 2014 opera Bel Canto, commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago through its Renee Fleming initiative; and Dreamers, the 2019 oratorio for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra that recounted the stories of undocumented young people facing the possibility of deportation to homelands they had never known.
L籀pez and Cruz, who also will be at Thursdays recital, built the oratorio around interviews in 2018 with several Berkley dreamer students. It was at a time when then-President Trump was leading the charge to nullify President Obamas 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program. DACA allows a reprieve from deportation for undocumented adults who had come to the U.S. as children with their parents and grew up in the States.
During the pandemic, L籀pez said Cruz was so moved by media images of immigrant children being held in cages that he revisited some of the poems from Dreamers. He also wrote new ones that took a deeper look at the notion of children being held in captivity not only along the border but in war-torn regions like Ukraine. He showed the poems, more than 30 of them, to L籀pez in fall 2021 and proposed doing a project that followed Dreamers.
When he showed those (poems) to me, I felt like, yeah, this is something we should explore further, L籀pez said.
L籀pez selected four poems The Orchid Boy, Tango For A Rapist, Lullaby for the Insomniac Child and The Girl of the Clouds for his Quiet Poems song cycle, written for Fabiano. Throughout the process, he worked closely on revisions with the 39-year-old Fabiano, whose career has taken him to nearly 90 international stages including every major operatic stage.
Fabiano had reached out to L籀pez a couple of years ago after watching a video of one of the composers symphonic poems.
I asked him if he had any music for tenor and piano, said Fabiano, who hasnt done a lot of contemporary music in his recitals, but said Ive really wanted to.
Fabiano and Philippe worked closely with L籀pez on the song cycle, tweaking some areas to better fit his voice and learning the tonal structure that included delayed harmonies where the vocal line comes in after the piano leads the harmony.
Fabiano
Jimmy writes progressive but also easy for the ear at the same time, Fabiano said. Its kind of a hybrid. Its structurally tricky.
L籀pez said that a year into the project, everything was coming together with one exception: they needed a commission.
Enter 做厙勛圖 Desert Song Festival.
A board member had seen L籀pezs Bel Canto in Chicago and suggested commissioning the 45-year-old, who had been nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2022 for his violin concerto Aurora.
George (Hanson) comes in the picture and says is there any projects you might have in mind? Any singers you want to work with? L籀pez recalled of the call with the song festival coordinator. The stars aligned.
Im very excited about this piece, Hanson said. It looks like a really compelling work. Whats exciting about this is that they have all worked on the piece.
I hope (the audience) comes away feeling that the music is impactful and the text is new and interesting, said Fabiano, making his Arizona debut. But Fabiano, whose career is largely centered in Europe, said he has long heard of the 做厙勛圖 Desert Song Festival through friends who have participated including Philippe.
Its a veritable institution, he said. Ive known about it a long time.
Fabiano and Philippe will join Hanson, L籀pez and Cruz for a conversation at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 14, about the creative process that it took to bring Quiet Poems to life. The conversation will be in Holsclaw Hall at the University of Arizona School of Music, 1017 N. Olive Road, and admission is free.
Tickets for Thursdays recital, also at Holsclaw Hall, are $40 through .
In addition to L籀pez, the 做厙勛圖 Desert Song Festival has tapped prominent American composers Richard Danielpour (Songs of Love With Loss, 2020), Jake Heggie (What I Miss the Most, 2021), Jennifer Higdon (Summertime Music, 2022) and Ricky Ian Gordon (Marvin Gaye Songs, 2023) for its commissioning program.
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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Twitter @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
Reporter
