I’m back with Journal #2 of my time at the 54th Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato. Along with my observations, I’m recommending two recordings so you can get a sense of what I’ve been experiencing.
Wednesday held two events in store for me. The first was back at the Explanada de la Alhóndiga for a concert by Orquesta Moderna. Led by Rosino Serrano, this large jazz ensemble made quite the impression.
For my money they were at their best when doing the most obviously Mexicana or Latino Americana music. The energy in those selections really got me and the crowd going.
I only had an hour with this concert before having to jet over to another event – more about that in a minute. Within just a few minutes I was already wishing I could stay for the entire concert.
Their special guests were equally impressive and included jazz guitarist Francisco Lelo de Larrea and pianist Alex Mercado.
De Larrea was up first. If I had any doubts about his ability or reputation – which I didn’t – seeing the guitarist from Orquesta Moderna taking videos while on stage would have removed any doubt. It was also great to see one musician so taken with another.
Mercado is a force to be reckoned with on the 88 keys. Not that he’s a beast. Rather, he’s equally sublime and technically dazzling as the music called for it. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the album Coalescencia which finds Mercado’s music performed by Orquesta Moderna.
His Concierto para Piano y Big Band “Escenas de una Ciudad” is stunning. This would certainly have made New In Music upon its release in May if I had known about it. I strongly recommend you listen to it.
Mother Nature, however, made the concert challenging for the team responsible for adding smoke so the lights had a great presence in the look of the show. Over a dozen times they pumped smoke onto the stage, yet the wind blew most of it away. No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t capture that feeling often found in Herman Leonard’s best jazz photographs: musicians performing with powerful images of smoke surrounding them.
After the first hour, I made my way to Teatro Juárez, a theater that is fast approaching its 123rd birthday on October 27th. Last night will go down as a major one in my memory bank as the night I finally saw a live performance of an opera by the late Kaija Saariaho.
Readers of Cultural Attaché know of my passion for her work. That was significantly elevated by seeing Adriana Mater.
The opera had its world premiere in Paris in 2006. If you want to hear Adriana Mater, a recording by the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen just received the Gramophone 2026 Classical Music Award for best opera recording.
The two-act work focuses on Adriana and is set in an unnamed country, in an unnamed time, during a war. She faces a rape, an unplanned pregnancy and recurring doubts as to whether her child will be Abel or Cain.
Adriana Mater is one of the most riveting and powerful works I’ve ever seen. The last 20 minutes, where we don’t know what is going to happen when her mostly grown-up son seeks out the perpetrator with plans to exact revenge on him, had me on the edge of my seat.
This production smartly used video projections to give us a sense of place and time, even if the images being shown were as undefined as the setting of this opera.
What I respond to most in Saariaho’s work is how dark, dramatic and brutal it can be in moments. Just when we think the music is leading us in one direction, the story often goes a different way.
Adriana Mater only has four characters: Adriana, her sister Refka, Tsargo, who raped her, and Yonas, her son. Mariana Sofía, Belén Marín, Guillermo Montecino and Osvaldo Martínez Salas were all first-rate.
This was a production by Estudio de Ópera de Bellas Artes y Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata. Kudos to the orchestra and conductor José Areán for playing Saariaho’s music so well.
My mind was swirling for hours afterwards making it tough to go to sleep. But that’s what I want from art. I got that and so much more.
Main Photo: Curtain call for Adriana Mater at Cervantino
All Photos by Craig L. Byrd