XVI Festival Latinoamericano de Música, Day 2

The main event of the following day – 27 May – was the concert by Ensamble CG from Colombia. They had given a workshop the previous day, during which their commitment to new music and to working together had been made apparent. This concert put these qualities very much in evidence, displaying a technical handling and a tightness rarely heard in new music ensembles. It would be invidious to single out individual pieces in their very well-chosen programme, but I will do so on special grounds: because she was the festival’s main dynamo, Diana Arismendi, whose Epigramas showed a sensitive use of voice, guitar and percussion and a gift for harmonic clarity. And, because this was a celebrations of her seventieth birthday, Graciela Paraskevaídis’s nada, a piece I found arresting in every respect. The simplicity of the material, written for the stark forces of one solo voice with nearly no text, gathered momentum through the simple device of progressive ascent in pitch, until the intensity was almost unbearable. This exposed structure was superbly paced by the singer Beatriz Elena Martínez, whose control and absolute immersion in the piece were breath-taking.