Featuring:

• Juan Gabriel Olivares —Clarinet

• Matti Pulkki —Accordion

In many ways, this concert began with a question: how can we, a clarinetist and accordionist, guide an audience through the many sounds and practices that make up the musical landscape of the Americas? With a theme as expansive as “music from the Americas,” it could have gone in any direction. What emerged is a rich and varied program that draws from multiple traditions and musical histories—one that acknowledges how the legacy of colonization and the movement of diasporic communities have shaped a vast and diverse range of musical expression across the continent.

A meditation on Osvaldo Golijov’s K'vakarat serves as a conceptual anchor for this concert. Born in Argentina to Eastern European Jewish parents, Golijov writes music that nods to tradition while sounding unmistakably contemporary. His interest in improvisation, combined with music shaped by ancient Hebrew texts, points to a lineage of diasporic creativity that runs through many musical practices across the Americas.

Much of the music in this concert looks either to the Latin American sounds in contrast to Golijov’s writing or to the direct influence of the Jewish diaspora on American music: a Piazzolla tango, a Brazilian choro, a Mexican danzón, and improvisations from the American composer Sam Sadigursky’s Solomon Diaries. Together, these works show how distinct musical histories across the continent speak to one another, sometimes directly, sometimes not, while continually reshaping what “music of the Americas” can be.