If there is a work that represents a snapshot of Aldemaro Romero’s life, is “Fuga con Pajarillo.” An exhilarating work that mixes Venezuelan folk music with established classical traditions, this work will have you dancing on your seat and analyzing advanced counterpoint at the same time.

Armando Bayolo, composer

A retelling of the myth of Orpheus, the cello concerto “Orfei Mors” is cast in two movements (performed without pause) each itself a kind of nesting doll enclosing several shorter pieces within its structure. The narrative is described through quotations from J.B. Greenough’s translation of Virgil’s Georgics, which includes the best known version of the Orphic myth.

Mr. Bayolo has been hailed for his “suggestive aural imagination” (El Nuevo Día) in works that are “full of lush ideas and a kind of fierce grandeur, (unfolding) with subtle, driving power” (The Washington Post). His “music combines the audacity of popular music, the verve-filled rhythmic language of Latin America, and the pugnacity of postmodern classicism into a heady, formidable concoction” (Sequenza21).

Manuel de Falla is the quintessential Spanish composer, and in his music, he exposes the Romani and Arabic influences that make Spanish music so characteristic. “El Amor Brujo” is a ballet where tradition, ghosts, and magic - musical and otherwise - give our season a fantastic ending.

Arguably, a magic fire is the main character in Falla’s “El Amor Brujo”