Here is my Friday July 24 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Wednesday July 22, 2009, Grant Park Music Festival concert with guest conductor Tito Muñoz, Luna Negra Dance Theater, singer Luciana Souza, and guitarist Romero Lubambo. The program is repeated Friday night at 6:30 p.m. Saturday night July 25 brings an opera excerpts program featuring Chicago favorite soprano Nicole Cabell, tenor Russell Thomas, and Basque guest conductor Juanjo Mena at 6:30 p.m. for a Venetian Night gala concert. All concerts are free.
Grant Park program gives Latin composers a solid platform
BY ANDREW PATNER
The Grant Park Music Festival is presenting three performances in one this week: classical, dance and neo-Brazilian popular song. Each is Latin, each is drawing many followers, and at times the three components together even manage to become greater than the sum of their parts.
In a program Wednesday night at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the Grant Park Orchestra continued its attention to great orchestral works by Latin composers or on Latin themes. The program also marked the Grant Park debut of Tito Muñoz, 26, the Queens, N.Y.-born assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. Luna Negra Dance Theater (above, left) also joined the bill both to mark its 10th anniversary season and to bid farewell to founder and artistic director Eduardo Vilaro, 45, who is heading to New York to take the reins of Ballet Hispanico. And popular Los Angeles-based Brazilian recording artist Luciana Souza and her guitar partner Romero Lubambo (above, right) were on hand to sing songs old and new
Muñoz offered a steady and precise hand in all orchestral portions of the program, sometimes perhaps a bit too steady in the orchestra-only works. Perhaps he believes that other conductors overdo the "south of the border" aspect of these pieces.
Aaron Copland's rhythmic 1941-46 Danzón Cubano was the opener, with Chicago-trained Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas' ritual-evoking 1938 Sensemayá and Puerto Rican-born, European-trained Roberto Sierra's 2001 postmodern Fandangos following along.
Vilaro, a Havana native, has built Luna Negra into a smooth and much-loved company here, with dancers wonderfully varied in background and appearance. They effectively gave themselves over to Alejandro Cervera's 1987 tradition-based-but-bending Tango Vitrola, danced to Chicagoan Elbio Barilari and Raul Jaurena's careful arrangements of true tango classics. Vilaro's own 2007 Cugat!, a tribute to Spanish-born, Cuban-reared bandleader Xavier Cugat, is already a company favorite, and dancers threw themselves into these sometimes intentionally wacky takes on mid-20th-century Cugat dance tunes.
There's no question that Souza has a beautiful and gentle voice. Her set of duets, two from her latest CD, Tide (Verve), with Lubambo, an expert guitarist, made this abundantly clear even to those new to her work. But there was no need to layer her vocalese over a transcription of Miles Davis's famous version of the Adagio from Rodrigo's 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez.
Fortunately, singer, guitarist, orchestra, dancers, and musical material all meshed in the world première of Vilaro's 2009 Bossa Nova, set to four infectious Brazilian pop numbers. Only Diane Ruettiger's over-the-top decorated unitards were out of place in this piece, which mixes legitimate crowd-pleasing with unexpected subtlety.
Throughout the evening's dances, the lithe Jessica Alejandra Wyatt, newcomer Hamilton Nieh, and athletic and ever-cheery JP Tenuta were firsts among Luna Negra's many equals.
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