Horizons: Live at Festival PAAX GNP

Horizons captures three contemporary Latin American concertos recorded live at the 2023 edition of Festival PAAX GNP in Quintana Roo, Mexico, with each work's own composer stepping into the soloist's chair. Paquito D'Rivera's The Journey: The Rice and Beans Concerto pits an unusual "combo" of cello, clarinet, and erhu against the full orchestra — a tribute, in D'Rivera's words, to the Chinese and African peoples who shaped New World culture, and to his artistic partnership with Yo-Yo Ma. Omar Massa's Concerto for Bandoneon, "Buenos Aires-Berlin" — commissioned by the Argentine Embassy in Germany and premiered at the Berlin Philharmonic — pushes tango into virtuosic symphonic territory, while Sérgio Assad's orchestration of Yamandu Costa's Ilhas Concertantes reshapes the guitarist's own themes into a three-part cycle spanning the Canary Islands, Brazil, and Uruguay. Conducted by Alondra de la Parra, founder and artistic director of the festival, The Impossible Orchestra — drawn from musicians at leading international institutions — gives these works the immediacy of live performance: risk, spontaneity, and the audible connection between composer-soloists and orchestra that a studio recording can rarely match.

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Alondra de la Parra, Conductor The Impossible Orchestra Omar Massa, Bandoneon