Meeroff and Matrovito performing at Broward College.
FLORIDA CHAMBER GROUP TELLS LINCOLN BRIGADE STORY THROUGH MUSIC By Sebastiaan Faber
In December 2021 and January 2022, the South Florida Chamber Ensemble (SFCE) performed Extranjeros, a program about the Spanish Civil War and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Written by Myrna Meeroff and produced in partnership with ALBA, the program featured music and texts from Manuel de Falla, María Rodrigo, Joaquín Rodrigo, Federico García Lorca, Joaquín Turina, William Grant Still, and Metallica.
M
yrna Meeroff, the SFCE’s executive director, is a French horn player and music educator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who has performed for audiences all over the world. She currently teaches at Broward College. Can you briefly describe the show? In the performance I read a segment of the story and follow it up with a piece of music and speak about the composer of the piece. For example, the second piece on the program is I Dream a World from the opera Troubled Island by William Grant Still. Langston Hughes collaborated with Still on the libretto but left to cover the Spanish Civil War before the piece was finished. I tied each segment to an artist and matched the music with the person. Included in the program is music by Lorca, Turina, Falla and Rodrigo. I pulled in Pablo Neruda through the music of the film Il Postino and Ernest Hemingway through the music of Metallica. It is a very eclectic mix of styles of music, from traditional Spanish to Mexican pop music. The program closes with a slideshow of Lincoln Brigade volunteers who died in Spain. Also, as it turned out, the flamenco guitarist I hired for the show, Nick Mastrovito, is Spanish. His grandmother and mother lived through the Spanish Civil War. When I first signed him on, I had no idea. After each performance I invite him to share his family’s story of the Spanish Civil War. We then open it up for comments from the audience. The discussions have been intelligent, vibrant, and thoughtful. How did the SFCE come about? I started the ensemble 11 years ago because I felt very disconnected in the orchestra that I was playing in. Horns 6
THE VOLUNTEER March 2022
sit in the back and basically, from the audience, all you see of me is a space between the first trumpet and the second horn. Musicians were not involved in any of the creative process. My conductor actually asked me once: “Can you do a little less with that phrase?” That was the end for me. I wanted to choose my repertoire and I wanted to connect the music to the world around us in a more meaningful way. With the SFCE, we give around 375 performances a year and every performance is thoughtfully curated. We include a diverse set of composers in every program, including women, Black and indigenous people of color, disabled people, and otherwise marginalized composers. We give detailed program notes from the
