Arturo Márquez, composer: “My music is the expression of a feeling of justice” | Culture | EUROtoday

To the composer Arturo Márquez (Sonora, Mexico, 75 years previous) the success of his Danzón No. 2 It caught him off guard. “I never imagined that my music would be heard in the great concert halls of Europe,” confesses essentially the most scheduled residing Latin American composer on the symphonic circuit. “That’s why I always say, jokingly but very seriously, that my career started at the age when others said goodbye to life with kilos and kilos of sheet music behind them.” It refers to Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and different geniuses who died prematurely. “I started at 44, and I’m still there, with hardly any rest,” he laughs on the telephone from his house in Tepoztlán, within the state of Morelos.

The origin of this world-famous rating, already recorded by a dozen orchestras on either side of the Atlantic and the topic of numerous preparations, dates again to a visit to Malinalco, an historic Mexican ceremonial enclave, which he made in 1993 within the firm of the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez. “They gave me their passion for Montuno rhythms, nostalgic melodies and the festive sensuality of danzón,” he remembers. “After visiting Veracruz and the Salón Colonia, I dedicated myself to studying old recordings that allowed me to understand their form and language until I found a personal and emotional way to express my respect for true popular music.”

In the nineties, his very authentic tribute to these roots was carried out all through Mexico and the southern United States. “Suddenly something happened and my destiny changed,” says this son and grandson of mariachis who began enjoying the violin when he was 14 years previous. The twist within the script was signed by Gustavo Dudamel, who included his Caribbean-style work into the repertoire of the Simón Bolívar Symphony throughout its presentation tour in Europe. Suddenly, his danzón sounded in Vienna, Berlin or London with the identical naturalness as within the Colonia Obrera of the Federal District. “They took him around half the world,” Márquez celebrates. “Since then, I feel privileged, because they have not stopped asking me for new scores.”

In the toughest months of the pandemic, director Alondra de la Parra commissioned a piece for the Imposible Orchestra’s solidarity undertaking that was launched in 2022 on the Paax GNP Festival within the Riviera Maya. “When he proposed it to me, I immediately agreed,” he admits. The strategy was to write down a large-format piece for the soloists of the group, within the model of the Concertant variations of Ginastera or the Concerto for orchestra by Bartók. “Taking the idea of ​​the impossible, of that unusual confinement that we suffered in 2020, I began to investigate and reflect on what type of music people needed in moments of maximum uncertainty.”

The end result, the Impossible Symphonywill be heard tomorrow on the National Auditorium with the Mexican maestro conducting the Madrid Community Orchestra. “There are realities that we would like to improve and we cannot,” displays the composer. “After recounting these concerns, I proposed to Alondra that each movement have to do with one of these daily urgencies that we have been carrying for centuries.” Migration, local weather change, gender violence and collective dignity discover their precise place within the rating. “More than politics, my music has to do with consciousness, awakening and the expression of a feeling of justice,” he asserts.

Márquez has lived in California and is aware of effectively the tradition of the United States, the place he was in a position to examine because of a Fulbright scholarship. Perhaps that is why, as a result of he has all the time felt at house there, it’s tough for him to course of Trump’s racist rhetoric towards Latinos. “It’s something that affects me very closely,” he admits. “I say it openly and with terror.” On the opposite facet of the border, the place he travels ceaselessly, he all the time leaves household and buddies. “The policies that are being applied are erroneous, dangerous and deeply hypocritical, since they do not address the underlying problem and fuel violence,” he asserts. “Migration is not bad or new. What is missing is the will to find real solutions.”

Admiration for Manuel de Falla

Although this time he will be unable to journey to Madrid, Márquez maintains an “emotional bond” with Spain, as demonstrated in his Fandango mestizo for violin, which was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and within the admiration that he has all the time professed for Manuel de Falla. “I remember that being in Córdoba [Argentina]in the theater where the Cádiz composer attended before he died there, I entered a room and experienced an intense already seen“, he says. “The curious thing is that, years later, during my first visit to the Mosque of Córdoba I had the same feeling as if I had been there before.” Unable to explain the relationship between both places, he confined himself to composing a piece for euphonium and piano that was presented in Malaga in 2022 and which, of course, was titled Already seen.

After parading through its pages Emiliano Zapata, Martin Luther King and Gandhi, among other “symbols of resistance,” Márquez has lastly obtained an “inspiring libretto” for an opera, written by his good friend Saúl Juárez and whose theme he refuses to disclose. “Now I am working on a new work for violin and orchestra about Frida Kahlo’s life of pain and color,” he declares. “But there will be more things to come…” He isn’t afraid of synthetic intelligence (“I manage well with the computer, but I am late to that”) neither is he intimidated by the ringing that has been punishing his ears for ten years. With tinnitus, he says, the alternative occurs than with silence: “When you mention it, it appears.”