Toronto’s Upper Canada Choristers and Cantemos, the chamber choir specializing in Latin American music, celebrate the music of Venezuela for their next concert on May 16. At Venezuela Viva, UCC welcomes special guests La Petite Musicale Of Toronto, a Caribbean chorale, poet Laura Morales Balza, and composer César Alejandro Carrillo.
Pianist Hye Won (Cecilia) Lee (also an LvT writer) accompanies the choirs, and Venezuelan-Canadians Antonio Mata and Cecilia Salcedo, both former Cantemos members, act as emcees.
The program includes works by Carrillo, including two pieces previously commissioned by UCC. El Pajaro que espero (The Bird I Await) is set to a poem by Morales Balza, who is married to Carrillo. The bittersweet work commemorates the son they lost at a tragically early age. La Rosa de los vientos (The Wind Rose), sets lyrics by the choir’s own Jacinto Salcedo to music. The piece is named after a type of diagram used to chart wind direction and speed, and deals with themes of nostalgia and loneliness.
Carrillo will also conduct three movements from his work Missa sine nomine (1999/2008). The UCC gave the Canadian premiere of the work in 2012.
“Venezuela is a country with a rich, complex, and varied musical history. It has been a thrill to mine the veins going deep into its foundation. It is impossible to convey more than a taste of the delicious variety in a single concert,” says artistic director Laurie Evan Fraser in a statement.
In addition to the concert, Carrillo will give a choral workshop for the Upper Canada Choristers, Cantemos, and La Petite Musicale Wednesday, May 14, and other city choirs are invited to attend.
La Petite Musicale Of Toronto
Venezuelan music carries its roots in Spanish, African, and Caribbean traditions, with the influence of Indigenous culture.
La Petite Musicale of Toronto was formed in 1969 after members of a folk choir from Trinidad and Tobago found themselves in a new city. The choir reflects Toronto’s multicultural roots and their repertoire includes calypso, classical works, and other musical genres.
The original La Petite Musicale of Trinidad & Tobago was founded by Olive Walke in 1940. Toronto-based musician and educator Lindy Burgess is celebrating his 50th anniversary year as musical director of La Petite Musicale of Toronto.
Composer César Carrillo
César Carrillo was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He began his musical journey with studies in cello as well as music theory and history at the José Ángel Lamas School of Music. He followed up with studying composition at the José Lorenzo Llamozas School with Modesta Bor, a widely respected composer and choral conductor.
He joined the Conservatory of the National Youth Orchestra, where he earned the title of Choir Director in 1987, and later earned a degree in choral conducting, from the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales (IUDEM).
Carrillo continued his studies internationally with conductors such as Robert Sund in Sweden, Vic Nees in Belgium, and Alice Parker in the USA, among others.
His compositions have received several awards, and today he is one of the most prominent composers and arrangers in Venezuela. He holds the position of conductor of Cantarte Coro de Cámara, the award-winning choir he founded in 1991, and assistant conductor of Orfeón Universitario, the musical wing of the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
César Alejandro Carrillo’s Gloria (Missa sine nomine) performed by Entrevoces in Havana, Cuba (2011):
César Alejandro Carrillo: In Conversation
Upper Canada Chorister’s member (and lyricist) Jacinto Salcedo translated César’s words in a conversation.
Carrillo’s path was set for composition and conducting from an early age. That comes from his first experience with music, which was through singing in harmony in smaller groups.
“That was so attractive to me,” he says.
As a young boy, he was self taught. Though he says his approach was largely intuitive in the beginning, he began to understand harmonies, and how to put them together in a choral ensemble. He didn’t want to play by ear forever, though, and looked to understand music on a deeper level, and studied arranging, composition, harmony and counterpoint through a formal music education.
“I wanted to be a professional,” he says.
Today, he values both the intuitive and the more formal aspects of understanding music.
“I feel that less formal way of understanding music is very important,” he says. “There is intuition, and instinct — and you can’t learn that in school,” he adds. “A composer should never stop relying on intuition and instinct.”
Formal schooling provides structure, context, a broader understanding of history and other reference points. Both are essential, he says.
Like most composers, he finds it difficult to describe his own style. “Style is very important,” he says. He’s developed his own contemporary language, as he describes it, for composition. When it comes to inspiration, his own musical tastes are broad. “Particularly, jazz.” That’s jazz as it’s performed in Venezuela.
“I don’t consider himself a jazz musician,” he explains. Nonetheless, some jazz harmonies and other compositional elements find their way into his compositions.
Notably, he counts his former teacher Modesta Bor as one of his early influences. He would listen to her music as he wrote his very first works as a child.
“When I discovered her music, I felt a huge connection,” he says. He calls the opportunity to study and be mentored by her a great gift.
He cites Francis Poulenc, English composer Herbert Howells, and Tomás Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer of the Renaissance period as other influences, the latter in particular because of his use of counterpoint.
The Music
The program includes both sacred and secular works. Carrillo enjoys working with both. He says the way he treats the underlying emotions of secular vs sacred works differs.
“The range of emotions is larger,” he says of secular songs. In sacred music, he believes in keeping some emotional constraints in keeping with the source material. It’s a more formal approach.
“Both songs, the two secular songs they will sing, are kind of relevant especially for Latin American people,” he explains.
In particular, La Rosa de los vientos (The Wind Rose), evokes the feelings of nostalgia common to immigrants, of having family members who are so far away. “I cannot see you right now.”
The workshop on May 14 will work through his Missa sine nomine. It’s one of his better known pieces, part of a larger commission.
While he doesn’t consider himself a singer, his main works have involved choirs. To that end, Carrillo has built a kit of vocal production tools he’ll share at the workshop, including problem solving skills.
“I’m very pleased to come to Toronto to hear people perform my music,” he finishes. He’s hoping he will make more connections to the city at the workshop and concert.
For the concert finale, both choirs united will sing Alma llanera (Soul of the Plains) from a 1914 zarzuela (operetta), often said to be Venezuela’s unofficial national anthem.
- Register for the vocal workshop on May 14, which includes a ticket to the performance on May 16, [HERE].
- Register for Viva Venezuela on May 16 [HERE].
- Free Streaming at www.uppercanadachoristers.org or their YouTube channel.
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