Island trombonist-conductor to gift Pan-American panoply of sound
By PEGGY ANN BLISS
Special to The STAR
Anyone who’s hip to the latest in classical music knows that Jaime Morales is a bit of an acrobat. This talented member of a six-sibling brood of brilliant musicians can play trombone with one hand and conduct a symphony orchestra with the other.
Simultaneously.
Those who want to see this feat of musical ambidexterity can catch the Vienna-trained tyro and his gifted cohorts as they salute the hemisphere Saturday in a unique curated dialogue the versatile educator and composer calls “Voces de America” (Voices of the Americas).
The high-energy show opens with a jazzy work by Leonard Bernstein and closes with a masterpiece by Antonin Dvorák, two of the 20th century’s greatest portrayers of the United States’ effervescence and energy.
Bernstein goes European
New Yorker Bernstein opens the evening, with the overture to his Broadway show “Candide,” akin to Europe’s Offenbach classic operettas and Gilbert and Sullivan musicals.
The four-minute crowd pleaser stars brass and percussion to get the evening off to a rousing start.
The composer of “West Side Story” and other North American sagas will introduce works by Carlos Chávez from Mexico and Arcángel Castillo from Venezuela. Then Morales will spring his huge surprise from Scandinavia.
Morales, the first wind player to earn an artist’s diploma from Indiana University, will interpret “Concertino for Trombone and String Orchestra” by Swedish contemporary composer Lars-Erik Larsson.
Chávez, who created Mexican classical music and founded the Mexico Symphony Orchestra in 1936, follows with “Symphony of the Indies.” The short work in sonata form features native themes and percussion instruments, often made from autochthonous materials like conch shells.
Dvorák, the talented Bohemian Czech who got homesick during his professional sojourn to New York, had another symphony waiting in the wings: “The Eighth.”
This symphony promises more joy than the beloved “Ninth.”
The concert will be held Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce.
