“Music from North, Central and South America has arrived in the Alamo City via the San Antonio Symphony’s sixth annual winter music festival, ‘Las Américas,’ ” writes Travis Buffkin in Wednesday’s (1/13) San Antonio Current (Texas). “The musical celebration began on January 5 and lasts through February 23, featuring works curated by symphony conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing, including a highlight of ‘the most American’ of music: jazz.… I spoke with Lang-Lessing from his home in Berlin about his selections for the festival, particularly the pieces by Gershwin, Ellington and Strayhorn, and how they, and jazz, convey American-ness. ‘With most jazz musicians you can go from piano solo to trio to quintet to brass to big band, and then it’s just the next logical stop to go to symphony orchestra without sacrificing the spirit of the piece and the freedom of jazz performance…. Sometimes, in a piece like Porgy and Bess, when we do Catfish Row … the anger that is in the piece and the fear—fear, anger, hopelessness—is probably today as relevant as it was in 1935…. I don’t think it’s a Broadway piece, I think it’s an opera, it’s 20th century opera.’ ”
Posted January 19, 2016
