MOZART Y MAMBO CUBAN SABOR AND MOZARTIAN ELEGANCE BEST OF 2020 Sarah Willis with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Sarah Willis, a horn player with the Berlin Philharmoniker, arrived in Cuba some years ago to teach some master classes to young musicians.

Enamored with the warmth of the people of the island she has since gone back there to visit and make music with fellow artists. Combining the music of Mozart with the popular music that is alive and well and thriving in the Caribbean nation, MOZART Y MAMBO has just been released by ALPHA.

Sample: https://youtu.be/XeQKXjONFKA

It is a result of an unpredictably successful collaboration between Sarah Willis and the superb Havana Lyceum Orchestra and its magisterial young conductor Pepe Méndez.

The CD includes alongside Cuban music of the 50’s though the 90’s, Mozart’s Concerto no.3 and the Rondo for Horn, K371 alongside the whimsically titled Rondo alla Mambo, Sarahnade Mambo, and a Cuban Eine kleine Nachtmusik all three familiar Mozartian tunes injected with a good dose of spicy Cuban salsa.

What could have turned into a mere gimmick has instead produced felicitous results thanks to the excellence of the participating musicians and the straightforwardly honest approach to the music at hand.

This gem of an album joins my list of BEST OF 2020, as it defies categorization merely inviting the listeners to set aside preconceptions and listen to a cool mix of the Austrian and the Cuban, and swivel their hips to hot, sensually sinuous tunes by Perez Prado, Ibrahim Ferrer, and other Cuban old time icons played with a mixed combination of Cuban sabor and classical elegance by Sarah Willis, saxophonist Yuniel Lombida, trumpeter Harold Madrigal, pianist Jorge Aragon, and the enormously versatile Havana Lyceum Orchestra led by Maestro Méndez.

Rafael de Acha

https://youtu.be/XeQKXjONFKA

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”