Canciones que el río mumura (2022/2023)
Live recording from the premiere. Americas Society, June of 2023
Ensemble Dal Niente: Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano. Emma Hospelhorn, flute. Katherine Jimoh, clarinet. Mabel Kwan, piano. Kyle Flens, percussion. Ben Melsky, harp. Theo Ramsey, viola/violin. Michael Lewanski, conductor.
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Canciones que el rio murmura is the most recent of a series of works based on an Argentine melodrama from 1940 called 'Cita en la Frontera' (translatable as ‘Meeting/Date/Encounter At The Border’). In 1940, my grandmother on my mother’s side worked as an extra in the film, which featured Libertad Lamarque. The movie is very melodramatic. It represents the first wave of Hollywood taking over in Latin America, the internationalization of tropes. It’s very awkward which is interesting to me. Everything is blown out of proportion dramatically.
The idea of river runs throughout the cycle; the first piece is called ‘Madrigales del río’ (madrigals from the river). The reason the river is there is because my grandmother, when she wanted to be an actress, her pseudonym was Libertad del Rio. I take these walks on the forest preserve and there is the Chicago River. Which you can see and not see. In this work, the singer and the tape are the murmuring river. Sometimes the soprano will take the lead, sometimes the instruments will cover her up. She is the through line that is visible and invisible.
-Tomás Gueglio