Principal cellist Rojas settling back in with PRSO

Cellist Luis Rojas

By PEGGY ANN BLISS

Special to The STAR

Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) principal cellist Luis Rojas, a product of the famous Venezuelan “El Sistema,” has been quietly getting back to his Numero Uno cello seat.

On Saturday, he’ll be playing his fourth regular season after several months of illness. The concert will feature the guiding wand of Puerto Rican conductor Guillermo Figueroa, who preceded the present resident conductor Maximiano Valdés. He’s been away from the post for 18 years and now this season the PRSO is looking for a new head as Valdés prepares to pack his bags.

During those same years Rojas was also settling in the chair left by Jesús Morales, who will also be on the program this year.

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This isn’t the first time illness has changed Rojas’ musical plans. When he was 19 in Caracas, he switched from the trumpet to the cello due to a lung illness. Now, many years later, settled with his cello and with degrees from three North American universities and a resume of orchestra gigs in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, among other northern cities, he’s been teaching all that time.

In addition to cultivating young Puerto Rican cellists, he’s organized an annual festival called Cellestiko and lent his mellow tones to the faculty’s Sanromá Trio. Earlier this season, at a regular Sunday afternoon Family Concert, the Trio outdid itself with a polished and unique concert.

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The group, which also includes violinist Francisco Cabán and pianist Diana Figueroa, performed a beautiful work by the famed German composer Robert Schumann, and another by his wife, plus a world premiere by a 35-year-old Puerto Rican composer. The “G Minor Trio,” by the lesser known Clara, was a premiere here. However, it may not have been presented in public for centuries, making it a world revelation of sorts.

The real world premiere was a brief piece by Raúl Barrios, inspired by the theme of death and spiritual acceptance.The work, written for this trio, took top honors in the Conservatory’s second composition contest. “Les Alyscamps” (The Elysian Fields) was inspired by four works painted by Vincent van Gogh during his stay in Arles, France, in the late 18th century, proving that art has no boundaries either in time or form.

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The faculty trio, a staple on the local scene, was formed in 2015. Besides Rojas, it includes PRSO first violinist Caban and pianist Figueroa, a professor and other half of the faculty duo with pianist and former chancellor María del Carmen Gil. Both women are known on the professional stage as well as being dedicated to musical education.

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Figueroa is the wife of veteran musical director Roselín Pabón, and mother of young soprano Laura Pabón, recently featured in an excellent documentary on five opera singers of different levels from Puerto Rico. Gil, on the other hand, could consider the Conservatory in Miramar her baby.

The Cuban keyboard wizard shepherded the project over almost 15 years until the attractive campus on Ponce de León Avenue in Miramar opened in 2009, in the old orphanage for girls built in 1882. Appropriately, the Sanromá Trio performed in the Conservatory’s Jesús María Sanromá Theater, also named for Puerto Rico’s world famous pianist, who died in 1984 as Pope John Paul II flew over San Juan. The modern dome-shaped building, which houses the theater, was named after opera mavens Bertita and Guillermo Martínez and houses several smaller theaters for the busy calendar of performing teachers, faculty and invited professional artists, Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter and Puerto Rican actress Cordelia González as Maria Callas being among the latter.

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The Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Santurce’s Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center has been the proud stage for Conservatory denizens, especially Figueroa, no relation to the famous musical family, who a few years back gave an excellent performance of a work by Black composer Florence Price, a testimony to her commitment to underexposed minority composers.

The good news is that Gil will soon be on the PRSO roster for an unusual presentation with its lead trumpet. The season’s sixth classical concert, Nov. 22, will feature Gil and Felipe Rodríguez Guzmán playing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Concerto for this rare combination, under the baton of Spanish conductor José María Moreno. With works by Mikhail Glinka and Sergei Rachmaninoff, the event should be a perfect meld of Russian and Hispanic talent. It’s refreshing to see more women taking center stage than in the past few seasons.

Several seasons ago, in an ironic twist, the only woman

was transgender pianist Sara Davis Buechner, whose bookings in the United States took a dive after her crossover in 1995. Canada and Puerto Rico rolled out the welcome mat and she has since resumed an active career.

Times have changed, and women on the podium have become a more common sight.

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Former PRSO musical director Guillermo Figueroa will conduct Saturday’s season concert in two major works, one French and one Russian.

The orchestra will open the fourth concert of the 66th season ⁶with expatriate composer Igor Stravinsky’s 1947 version of the ballet “Petrushka.” The piece revolves around a popular but flawed puppet who is the Russian version of Punch in England and Pulcinella in Italy.

The four-movement work derives from the timeless tragic ballet the composer wrote in 1911 for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and famous dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

It tells of the love and jealousies of three puppets. Petrushka is in love with the ballerina, who loves the Moor.

Petrushka is known as the immortal and unhappy hero at every fair in all countries.

Figueroa, 72, is musical director of the Santa Fe Symphony in New Mexico and the Lynn Symphony in Florida.

The second piece features organist Andrés Mojíca. The work “Symphony No. 3 in C Minor,” by Camille Saint Saëns, was the composer’s last and he dedicated it to his recently deceased friend, Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.

The unusual 1886 composition was very well received at its premiere in Paris, but Saint Saëns never wrote another symphony, although he was asked several times.

Mojíca, who teaches choral direction and organ at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in Río Piedras, has degrees from two of the most prestigious conservatories in the world -- Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio, and Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

He has performed in several prestigious venues and has served for many years as UPR’s official organist and was also music director for several years at Union Church in San Juan.