Music of the Americas: Recuerdos and Premonitions

Tuesday, March 15, 10 a.m.

Grammy-nominated Brazilian singer and composer Luedji Luna was born in Bahia, the center of Afro-Brazilian culture, and has performed over the world. She released the audiovisual album Bom Mesmo é Estar Debaixo D'água (What's Really Good Is Being Underwater) in 2021, and recorded a live version just for Music of the Americas last month.

We will release the complete concert on March 25, but you can enjoy a preview now.

Wednesday, March 16, 10 a.m.

Canadian Indigenous baritone Jonathon Adams and a group of New York's finest baroque specialists led by Robert Mealy and including Johanna Novom, John Lenti, Ezra Seltzer, and Avi Stein was on our virtual stage in February with a program dedicated to music from the extravagant early-baroque “Stylus Phantasticus.”

They closed the concert with David Pohle's (1624–1695) lovely “Vox Domini super aquas,” a colorful cantata which, along with most of his works, remained unavailable for centuries.

Thursday, March 17, 10 a.m.

The Argentine duo of Jonatan Alvarado and Ariel Abramovich was on our virtual 2021 series with a program that explored the extremely rich repertoire of renaissance music found in northwestern Guatemala in the 1500s. The duo prepared new transcriptions and arrangements from the original manuscripts and recorded a wonderful concert at the medieval Tui cathedral in Galicia.

This anonymous Benedicamus Domino is closed by a fascinating fauxbourdon setting of the Deo Gratias.

Friday, March 18, 7 p.m.

Fonema Consort was co-founded by Costa Rican composer Pablo Chin, singer Nina Dante, and composer Edward Hamel in 2011. The group is known for their “enthusiastic embrace of daring new music” (Chicago Reader) and is driven by a fascination with pieces that foster rich interplay of voices and instruments. They were on our virtual stage in 2021 and return to our series with a live appearance this Saturday, March 19.

In preparation for tomorrow's concert, Recuerdos takes us back to Mauricio Pauly’s “Dust Unsettled” for soprano, piano, cello, electric guitar, bass trombone, and percussion, with video created by Zach Moore.

Saturday, March 19, 5 p.m.

Fonema Consort is live at Americas Society in New York with a program titled Her Words, which presents new works by Pablo Chin, Fernanda Aoki Navarro, and DM R that explore the writings of female thinkers of historic significance in Latin America, alongside a work by visionary Argentine composer and activist Graciela Paraskevaídis.

Watch here

The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concert series is made possible by the generous support of Presenting Sponsor MetLife Foundation. The Spring 2022 Music program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and by the Howard Gilman Foundation.