Skip to main content

CD Recommendation
Olé México GNP

Alondra de la Parra – Conductor
Pitingo, Concha Buika, Lila Downs - Voice
available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music

Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra’s latest project brought together three of the most decorated Spanish and Mexican singers for a grand celebration of Mexican songs. All singers were stellar but Spanish singer Pitingo stole the show in all the tracks he contributed. Clearly having a blast, his raspy tenor voice was both capable of great verve and tender lyricism as exemplified in the standout track Granada.

Middle-aged Concha Buika and Lila Downs might no longer have the lush and seductive voices of younger female singers, but they made it up by having plenty of authority, maturity, and energy. In Amor Eterna, I thoroughly enjoyed Concha Buika’s pining for eternal love, her throaty voice conveying perfect amount of anguish and regret that is often missing from younger singers’ rendition of this piece.

I could not figure out what orchestra Alondra directed in this CD, but they sounded an equal and had the same energy as the singers. The recording quality was exceptional as well and this CD is an aural feast you don’t want to miss out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Student Did Not Practice Again

My Student Did Not Practice Again I am sure the sight of a student who did not practice again was not unfamiliar to many of us teachers. I understand that it is frustrating and could suck the joy of teaching; I do know teachers who threw in the towel because of this. I must admit that it was a sore point at one point of my teaching career, but I decided to adopt a more positive approach because I genuinely wanted all my students to have a positive learning experience. Let me share with you a couple of pointers that hopefully could provide you with better solutions to this issue. ·       Empathize and diagnose It might be an instinct for many of us to immediately ask “Why didn’t you practice?” in a disapproving tone when faced with a non-practicing student. We might even launch into a tirade chiding student or institute a penalty. Perhaps naively we think that the student would feel bad for disappointing us. But trust me on this, those actions are going to ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Assigning Repertoire - The Balanced Approach

Assigning Repertoire - The Balanced Approach For the inaugural post of this blog, I am going to write about a topic that I feel is integral in piano teaching but strangely rarely discussed even in many pedagogical literatures. When it comes to choosing and repertoire for students, teachers often do this in linear fashion. Meaning, the next pieces a student learn would be incrementally more difficult than the current ones. So, for example, once a Grade 4 student completed Grade 4, they would move on the Grade 5 and only work on pieces set for Grade 5. Many teachers I know of follow this system, and to them it seems to be logical and fuss-free. But is it really? Consider that assigning repertoire this way means students would most likely be working only on pieces that are challenging for them. Motivated students might relish the challenge, but for majority of average students this might mean increasingly slow and frustrating progress that would gradually erode motivation. In addi...
Post a Comment
Read more

CD Recommendations - Biała flaga

Biała flaga Hania Rani – Piano Dobrawa Czocher - Cello available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music When it comes to recommending contemporary classical music, most would probably suggest the usual household names like Yann Tiersen, Ludovico Einaudi or Ryuichi Sakamoto. But of course, there are so much more to discover beyond these popular few. Biała flaga is 100% Polish affair, featuring contemporary classical music from Poland and performed by Polish pianist Hania Rani and cellist Dobrawa Czocher. I chanced upon this CD by accident because I wanted to check out further what Dobrawa Czocher had recorded, and I was glad I did. Hania Rani herself contributed a few compositions of her own, but the spotlight of this CD is on the compositions of the late Grzegorz Ciechowski, who tragically passed away at the age 44 in 2001. Ciechowski’s music could be best described as Yann Tiersen on steroids. More neo-classical than minimalistic, each of his compositions featured here a...
Post a Comment
Read more