Por Eso Te Quiero: Music of Carlos Guastavino & Ernesto Lecuona
$24 ($20 senior/military; GBCM First Chair/Pod Squad Third Wave members free)
- Matthew Melendez, voice
- Joe Sartori, piano
Ernesto Lecuona — Selected works
Carlos Guastavino — Selected works
About Por Eso Te Quiero:
Art songs are so often about the pain of love — lost love, unrequited love, love gone awry. So you’d think the tension between the bottomless love you feel for your child(ren) as a parent, and the constant, boundless anxiety you also experience about their well-being, would be a rich source of inspiration for poets and composers alike. But it’s rare in the English, German, French, and Italian repertoire. Not so though for Spanish art song, where there’s a whole tradition just around canciones de cuna, or cradle songs (lullabies).
So to celebrate Mother’s Day and kick off a new chamber music series, Great Bend Center for Music will be featuring a collection of Spanish language art songs that explore the complexities and wonders of motherhood.
Featuring the music of Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, Cuban-American composer Ernesto Lecuona, and Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino, this Sunday matinee performance will include selections both humorous and introspective performed by Great Bend Center for Music’s founder Matthew Melendez with pianist Joe Sartori in an interactive, conversational format.
This special performance kicks off an annual series that will go through 2023 in the rich acoustic and intimate environment of Faith Lutheran Church in Shelton.
About the First Chair Chamber Series:
The First Chair Chamber Series is an annual series that goes through 2023 that focuses on the music of underperformed LGBTQ composers and composers of color. Great Bend First Chair members are leaders throughout our community who support Great Bend Center for Music’s vision.
About Matthew Melendez, voice
Matthew’s passion is making music with people who don’t think of themselves as musicians.
Kids who have never sung in groups. Seniors who haven’t sung since high school. Tourists who had no idea they were walking into a Beer Choir.
Really, no one is safe from singing around him.
In addition to undergraduate degrees in the arts of persuasion (Advertising Copywriting and Social Psychology), he has a master’s degree in vocal performance and pedagogy (where his thesis research focused on the power of cultural tourism to revitalize rural communities) and a doctoral degree (ABD) in choral conducting. His current research is centered on the community development applications of community music, and the transformative power of early childhood music for communities and families. He’s part of the inaugural cohort of the Teaching Artist Training Institute, and is particularly passionate about the El Sistema approach to empowering children through music.
In 2019 he made his Carnegie Hall debut leading two non-auditioned youth and adult ensembles in a world-premiere choral cantata commissioned for the occasion. The Shelton, Washington performance of that work, 'Borders' by John Muehleisen, won second in the community division of the 2019-20 American Prize: Ernst Bacon Award for the Performance of American Music. But even before this, community ensembles he’s either led or managed have shown a strong propensity for getting Lincoln Center and White House invitations.
https://elsistemausa.org/staff-member/matthew-melendez/