Under the leadership of CEO Melissa Ngan and Artistic Director Curtis Stewart, the American Composers Orchestra has been widening its programming gaze to meet the times – an appropriate move for an organization dedicated to championing a segment of creators whose work is often on the front lines of evolving political thought and sonic exploration. And their recent “Hello America: Transatlantic” concert on March 6 at Carnegie Hall felt less like a static collection of works grown from Latin America roots and more a dynamic question handed to the audience: how have Latin American, Jazz, and Classical music evolved with and from each other as they followed the tradewinds of slavery?
The program opened with the first part of Fantasy and Interludes on Going Home (inspired by Alice Coltrane’s Lord of Lords). The arrangement by Curtis Stewart was created with and for the young people of Harlem Samba, a program led by Dr. Dana Monteiro that sees Frederick Douglass Academy students studying and performing with samba masters. Smiling and grooving in front of the stage with the music memorized, these teenagers gave a signal that this would be a festive concert, a celebration. And in between each of the other works on the program, Harlem Samba showed up at different corners of the hall, performing with ACO in a variation that mirrored the pieces programmed around it.
Members of Harlem Samba — Photo by Alfred Kan
Tania León’s Ácana (written in 2008, the only non-world premiere of the evening) was the most abstract piece on the program, drawing inspiration from a poem by Cuban Laureate Nicolás Guillén dedicated to the acana tree, an up-to-90-feet tall behemoth that is transformed into myriad wooden structures and objects central to Cuban life. Opening with a trumpet solo and glistening string tremolos, the orchestra gradually woke up into a collection of disparate voices, including short holes of silence, that augmented into a frenetic cornucopia of sound. Maraca moments, fluttering flutes, a tangy bass clarinet solo, a muted horizon of strings, and a disjointed pulse of snap pizzicato, bongos, and claves punctuated a gradual melding of contrasting elements towards the end of the work.
Tomàs Peire Serrate’s Wayfarer was a 20 minute epic. The golden glint of crotales, bassoon chatter, and watercolor strings built a wave of sound full of what felt like danger. Wayward flutes, muted trumpet, and a plodding bass pizzicato dovetailing up into the violas gave an air of something lost and lovely. Particularly poignant moments included a dreamy cello section solo and a luscious solo by concertmaster Rubén Rengel. The work ended with a profound sense of place and an almost religious wash of calm that only comes from a composer wise enough to fully take their time in building a work.
Clarice Assad — Photo by Alfred Kan
The second half opened with Clarice Assad’s The Evolution of AI with Assad at her computer in the soloist spot. The piece imagines a situation in which a scientist experiments with an AI system that “is capable of understanding, processing, and ultimately generating music”. Over the course of this work that is as much performance art as it is composition, Assad wore an interactive ring that controlled computer-emitted (sometimes theremin-like) sounds, hopped up onto the podium and led the ensemble with Lydia Tár-esque gestures, and walked off stage as the orchestra continued to play. The climax of the work felt very much like an early ChatGPT rendering of some overarching musical question, with the orchestra emitting a rich frenzy of well-known fragments by Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Debussy, and Mussorgsky.
Bordones was a great end to the program, and one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen on stage. Featuring composer Edmar Castañeda playing his bright sapphire blue electric harp like a giant guitar – forever altering how I’ll think of both instruments – he opened the work with a solo full of charisma and magic. Proving to be full of sparkle, fun, and attitude, the piece presented new sonic and rhythmic spaces with every moment, musicians dancing in their seats as Castañeda danced with his harp.
Tito Muñoz and Edmar Castañeda — Photo by Alfred Kan
A projection behind the orchestra showing an artistic rendering of those trade routes with flowing avocado and pale gold lines bleeding into each other was a powerful visual component to this honoring and exploring of ways cultural displacement, despite being a byproduct of cruelty, has caused music as an artform to evolve and exponentially flourish. Brilliantly led by conductor Tito Muñoz, the concert felt like the center of a social triangle of concerts, parties, and going to church. In his opening remarks to the audience, Stewart said he’d recently been wondering what the true point of this art was, if – in the light of current events – it was worth it. “Yes, absolutely!” was one reply from an audience member. And Stewart nodded, saying “Yes, I’d like to think that we’re all the point.”
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