Ana Cervantes
In March, 1999, pianist Ana Cervantes received a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Award, a joint project of the governments of Mexico and the United States, administered in Mexico, by COMEXUS (the COmmittee MEXico-US), to go to Mexico and develop repertoire of Mexican contemporary music for subsequent performance in the United States. She also taught a workshop in interpretation of contemporary music at the School of Music of the University of Guanajuato. During 1999 and 2000, she lived many months in the city of Guanajuato.
Explaining her project, she said: "I worked closely with Mexican composers whose music I am already playing, established relationships with other composers, especially women composers, developed a repertoire of contemporary Mexican music to bring back to the US, taught at the Escuela de Musica of the University of Guanajuato and played new music of the US and Mexico in Guanajuato and in other parts of Mexico."
Cervantes has won plaudits from presenters, audience members, and the press, for her approachable performance style as well as for her vibrant interpretations. The Newark Star-Ledger has praised her as an "emotional, physical player with extraordinary touch, who has garnered accolades as soloist, ensemble musician, and accompanist." Her April 1994 performance of John Corigliano's Fantasia on an Ostinato was described by the Newark Star-Ledger (Paul Somers) as "riveting". Several reviews in Classical New Jersey in recent months have described her "memorably flawless performance [of] intelligence and conviction," (Robert Butts) saying that she "thoroughly understands the Spanish idiom," (Doris LaMar) and that she "brought a Hispanic sensibility to everything she played, bringing a deep passion (to the music)." (Paul Somers).
In February of 2000, she performed the U.S. premiere of two works by major Mexican composers, the Sonata para Piano of Pilar Ortega and the Third Piano Sonata ("Madre Juana") of Federico Ibarra, at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, a concert cosponsored by the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC, in celebration of the Museum's retrospective exhibition of Remedios Varo.
In June of 2000, in the International Festival of Contemporary Music El Callej¢n del Ruido in Guanajuato, Mexico, she performed music of Alicia Urreta and Ram¢n Montes de Oca of Mexico and the world premiere of a new work by Brad Garton (USA), which was written especially for her to celebrate the binational communication symbolized by the Fulbright. During the summer of 2000, she appeared as guest artist in the 24th Chanticleer Summer Music Festival in Indiana, performing the U.S. premiere of "Dias de Mar y Rio" (Days of Sea and River) of Mexico's Arturo Marquez. October saw a visit to Cuba, where she premiered works of Mexican composers Ibarra, Montes de Oca, and Urreta, as well as works by US composers Laurence Altman and Olga Gorelli, in Casa de las Americas as part of the XV Festival of Contemporary Music of La Habana. Early in November 2000, she was featured in a program of Mexican music as part of the National Museum of American History's Piano 300 exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, a concert cosponsored by the Instituto Cultural de Mexico of Washington, DC, and the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.
Cervantes has gracefully paired her many premieres with "standards" such as music of Bach and Mendelssohn. Collaborating in performance with poets, she makes a space in which the spoken word - in a variety of languages - joins its voices with music.
Amor de la Danza/Love of the Dance, Cervantes' debut CD, was released in January of 1999 on the Affetto Recordings (Lawrenceville, NJ) label. The recording features the world-premiere recording of Joaquin Nin-Culmell's "Twelve Cuban Dances" and of Olga Gorelli's "Serenade: I Carry Your Heart With Me," (with poetry of E.E. Cummings) as well as works of Albero, Bach, Byrd, and Piazzolla. Paul Somers of Classical New Jersey says of the disc, "Cervantes is not about purism. She is about passion, and that's what this recording delivers."
American Record Guide (Alexander Morin, Nov/Dec 1999) commented that Cervantes plays Gorelli with "moving intensity; her Bach is highly colored, rhythmically interesting, invested with real feeling and quite lovely; altogether, an attractive hour of interesting music, and the sound, from a mix of studio and concert recordings, is excellent." Peter Spencer of the Newark Star-Ledger says Cervantes is "a lyrical player in the best sense of that word: assured, fresh, well thought-out, always in the moment;" and Elaine Strauss of US One News wrote: " The Cuban Dances incorporate the subtle but vivid elasticity of timing that gives authentic Spanish music its tension."
Cervantes seeks to bring music out of the concert hall and into the community, and has said, "Most significant for me is performing with imagination and integrity in a way that moves my audience, whether they're adults or children, in a concert hall at 8 P.M. or in a school first thing in the morning." An exciting interdisciplinary collaboration which started in the 1998-'99 concert season was Crosscurrents, a young people's program with violinist Caroline Klemperer of the Chanticleer String Quartet and dancer Samuel LeSane of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. The trio continues to perform in various venues in the USA.
Cervantes has served on the artist faculty at Princeton University, at Rider University's Westminster Conservatory, and on the adjunct Fine Arts faculty of Hightstown's Peddie School. A graduate of Bard College, she counts Joan Tower and Theodore Lettvin as her most significant teachers. Currently Cervantes divides her time between the artists' community of Roosevelt, NJ and the city of Guanajuato, México, where her grandparents were married in 1914.
Cervantes is available for piano and chamber music recitals and master classes. Ana CERVANTES, pianist PO Box 69, Roosevelt, NJ USA 08555 TEL: 609.577-2004
