Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano. Emma Hospelhorn, flute. Kyle Flens, percussion. Jesse Langen, guitar. Ammie Brod, viola.
Library of Congress presents Ensemble Dal Niente. Recorded at Gannon Recital Hall, DePaul University. October 27, 2020.
Lamarque Songs is an expansion of a preexisting piece for voice and guitar, Fantasía Sobre Cita En La Frontera. The program notes for the duo version read “In 1945, my grandmother on my mother’s side worked as an extra in a film featuring Libertad Lamarque. The name of that film is Cita en la Frontera (translatable as ‘Meeting/Date/Encounter At The Border’). It is an early film by Lamarque who later became one of the biggest movie stars of the Spanish-speaking world. Until I recently watched Cita En La Frontera, I wasn’t aware of the extent to which films of this time had shaped both of my grandmothers’ mannerisms, body language, and their voices (specially their singing voices)”. With the use of sounds from the movie, Lamarque Songs operates as an oneiric radio soap opera of sorts and as such is a nostalgic account of that kind of 40’s glamour, at once shy and loud, at the same time proper and unapologetically melodramatic.