TIME TO BUILD THE NEST
DAVID RUSSEL EN VIVO
CONTRIBUTORS:
Rolando Ramon - Chief Editor, Magazine Design, Photography Suzanna Bridges-Keese - PR Assistant, Editor Sebastian Forestier - Graphic Design Milena Sousa - Photography, Social MediaWelcome to the April issue of Cadenza, where our concert season is in full swing! I would like to draw your attention to two very special events later this month: one of the most prominent living guitarists, David Russell, will be performing in the UTSA Recital Hall on April 20th, and our Lyric Theatre program, including choirs and orchestra, will present a one-time only “Verdi Project” at the Edgewood Performing Arts Theatre on April 26th. We hope to see you at both of these events! And as always, we are grateful for your support of our guest, students and faculty performers.
This issue includes feature articles on the concerts mentioned above, as well as our Mariachi Los Paisanos’ triumphant debut last month at the Houston Rodeo Mariachi Invitational! Our Alumni Spotlight this month features soprano Bronwyn White, and the other concert announcements and articles will have you marking your calendar for upcoming events. April is also a very special time for us, as it includes Giving Day on April 9-10. Your gift of any size means so much to us as we continue to improve opportunities for our students in the School of Music to thrive! Please consider joining us in this celebration of all that makes UTSA a special place to be!
Remember to check our online event calendar for the most up-todate concert information. And share Cadenza with your friends and family outside of San Antonio; they can check out the livestreams of our performances on our School of Music Facebook page! As always, we hope that all of you will take this opportunity to follow us on social media, where we post fun features on our students, faculty, and staff, link to our livestreams, and share photos and video clips of all that is taking place in the UTSA School of Music.
Are you interested in having live music at your own event? You could hire a student group! Look for the “Book Us” link on the School of Music website! And as always, we invite our alumni to submit your news and reconnect with your UTSA Music friends by sending an update to music@utsa.edu. We look forward to seeing you soon for live music at UTSA!
It’s officially that time of year again, Runners ! T he College of Liberal and Fine Arts raised over $59,700 during Giving Day 2023 for its music programs last year, including $14,250 from completing bonus donor challenges. This year, it’s GAME ON to top last year’s high scores for donors and dollars raised to support a better education for our students.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is thankful to have a strong community in the city of San Antonio and through its network of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors. UTSA Giving Day is an opportunity for members of our community to support specific areas of UTSA that are meaningful to them, whether it be through financial means, or by sharing the event through any social outlets
UTSA Giving Day 2024 will run from 10:11 a.m., Tuesday, April 9 until 6:50 p.m., Wednes day, April 10. During this period, there will be a collective focus on fundraising and raising awareness through community engagement.
You can support UTSA Music by donating to or spreading awareness about any of our three campaigns: Friends of Music, Mariachi Los Paisanos, and the Spirit of San Antonio Marching Band. You can donate online at givingday.utsa.edu .
Mariachi Los Paisanos is one of our fastest growing ensembles! With the group’s traditional instrumentation and performance attire, Los Paisanos are dedicated to the preservation and authenticity of San Antonio’s cultural identity through mariachi music. This campaign seeks to support their continued growth in size and performance quality though the purchase of additional trajes and instruments, as well as provide funding for travel expenses and appearances at competitions and festivals!
The Spirit of San Antonio Marching Band represents the heart of The University of Texas at San Antonio as their powerful sound echoes from campus to the Alamodome and far beyond! Students from every college at UTSA participate in SOSA, performing for athletic events, university functions, Fiesta San Antonio parades, and many other community events. Supporting SOSA will help gurantee instruments and uniforms for new members ,as well as cover travel expenses.
Friends of Music provides scholarships for music students each year at UTSA. In addition, this fund is also used to help our students travel to participate in competitions and research conferences around the country, as well as allow them to give premiere performances of commissioned works from underrepresented composers. When you donate to Friends of Music, you are creating transformative opportunities for music majors as they advance their skills through higher education.
Our 2024 En Vivo Guest Artist Concert Series presents guest piano quartet Agarita on Saturday, April 13, 7:30 p.m. in the UTSA Recital Hall. A chamber ensemble dedicated to showing audiences collaborative musical events, Agarita shows a new way to experience classical and contemporary music.
Agarita was founded by Sarah Silver Manzke (violin), Marisa Bushman (viola), Ignacio Gallego (cello), and Daniel Anastasio (piano). The quartet is rooted in San Antonio and works closely with artists of various genres to weave cross-artistic narratives for each concert. These concerts are free of charge to the community and are presented in a bi-lingual format to accommodate the vibrant Hispanic culture of San Antonio.
UTSA Music is excited to welcome Agarita as they celebrate Spanish and South American sounds, consisting of feisty tangos of Astor Piazzolla and groovy street rhythms of Radames Gnattali, alongside new, inspiring works by Andrea Casarrubios and Laura Vega.
The set list for the concert includes a piano quartet of a work by Laura Vega titled Paraisos Perdidos III, a solo cello piece by Casarrubios titled Piazzolla Trios (Spring + Winter), and a piece by Jessica Meyer titled Duende, for solo viola, among other famously beautiful pieces by various artists.
As the En Vivo Guest Artists Concert Series continues to present renowned artists around or within the San Antonio Community, Agarita will inspire the audience with their collaborative presentation at UTSA.
Agarita’s performance at the UTSA Recital Hall is sponsored by Casa De España San Antonio and H-E-B.
Written by
Suzanna Bridges-Keese
The School of Music welcomes classical guitar virtuoso David Russell to the UTSA Recital Hall this Spring for a concert featuring his 2024 USA concert tour program. He is the second Grammy-winning artist to perform at UTSA this year.
An international phenom, Russell was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Guitar Foundation of America in 2018 and has been recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1997. Russell is admired in many parts of Europe with a rich history in classical guitar, such as Spain. He was named an honorary member of the oldest guitar society in the country, “Amigos de la Guitarra.” The extraordinaire has seventeen CDs with Telarc International and has been praised by The New York Times for his performances and guitar techniques. With his upcoming concert in San Antonio, local and visiting concert-goers will have a rare opportunity to experience his playing and leave with a new impression of the classical guitar world.
Russel’s performance comes fresh off the heels of our recently concluded Southwest Guitar Symposium which saw a number of highly acclaimed guitarists give concerts and masterclasses on campus. Russell himself performed during the Symposium’s former incarnation at the Southwest Guitar Festival in 2003.
Russell’s program contains works by several well-known Spanish composers such as J. Broca’s Pensamiento Espanol, Benedetto Marcello’s Sonata, and F. Moreno Torroba’s Castillos de España. Russell will also present a classical guitar arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Flute Sonata in E minor, BWV 1034. Accompanying the performance will be a projected visual presentation of various Spanish castles, the theme of which Russell’s program conceived. The beautiful depictions serve to not only further evoke a musical landscape within the minds of listeners, but to also provide the audience with context for Russell’s artistic inspiration.
Russell’s performance in the UTSA Recital Hall will officially conclude UTSA Arts’ second En Vivo Guest Artist Concert Season on Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m. Admission to attend the concert is free.
Written by Suzanna Keese-Bridges
The UTSA Lyric Theatre presents the final production of its 2023-2024 season with The VERDI Project. The concert will be held at the Edgewood Theater for Performing Arts starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 26.
From the creative mind of director Jourdan Laine Howell, Associate Professor of Instruction of Voice and Lyric Theatre, the show is a brand-new collaborative effort between the the school’s theatre, orchestra, and choirs. The massive production commemorates the School of Music’s 50th anniversary this year.
The event will put the life and works of the famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi on center stage. UTSA Lyric Theatre vocalists will perform melodies by one of opera’s most celebrated composers. The show also includes narration by UTSA professor emeritus Gary Mabry and student Justin Chappell.
The production will feature the UTSA orchestra and all three choral ensembles. Directed by orchestra conductor Troy Peters and Jordan D. Boyd, assistant director of Choral Activities, this collaboration will provide the number of voices required for Verdi’s famous choruses.
The production will also feature costume pieces from UTSA’s MET Opera collection. Howell is proud of the collaborative effort and the team’s progress in putting the project together.
“I am thrilled to help celebrate the School of Music’s 50th anniversary year with this huge team project because it speaks to the collaborative, familial spirit of our school’s faculty and students,” she said. “Verdi is a big name in opera. Maestro Peters and I agreed that focusing on a giant of the opera world would be a great way to commemorate 50 years.”
Howell added that she and Peters will work together again this fall.
“We will bring another opera giant to the stage – the masterful Mozart himself in a production of Don Giovanni, one of the world’s most performed operatic works.”
Student vocalists for the production include Callan Sramek, Joshua Moncada Zoll, Emily Densmore, Alyssa Moreno, Lucas Moncada Zoll, Deeana Janai-Malave, Francheska Lugo, Antonio Zubillaga, Osvaldo Chacon, Lexie Cairy, Taylor Malcolm, Jared Kellman-Medina, and Ryan Noelle.
The creative team consists of Peters, Howell, Aurorah Cerros (assistant stage director), Madeleine Phipps (stage manager), Chuck Drew (lighting design) and Boyd (shadow conductor).
Mariachi Los Paisanos continues to impress and let the world know about the flourishing mariachi program being built at UTSA. Last month, the group performed at Go Tejano’s Annual Mariachi Invitational. The competition, which took place over the weekend on March 9-11, features professional mariachi groups from across Texas and beyond competing in front of live audiences. The competition was in its 32nd edition, but this was the group’s first appearance ever at the invitational.
The ensemble first performed inside Houston’s Arena Theatre, which seats 2,850 people. The performance was musically impressive and captivating for the many audience members. The performance was enough to move the group to the next round, held the following afternoon inside the Hideout Tent at the Houston Rodeo. The large venue has a capacity similar to the previous one, and once again, the young mariachi delighted the crowd with their music. When all was said and done, Mariachi Los Paisanos finished the competition in 3rd place, just shy of advancing to the final round.
After the competition concluded, the ensemble performed for an hour on the main grounds outside NRG Stadium, where they received further exposure to the weekend crowd at Texas’s largest rodeo. Evoking strong responses and captivating audiences of thousands with stellar performances and showmanship, the group came out of the experience with a new, clearly defined standard.
From a young artist’s standpoint, performing for an audience of that caliber and receiving as much attention as they did can be a life-changing experience.
“It was insane, and compared to all the other groups...yeah, they had the crowd eating out of their hands,” recalled the ensemble director Michael Acevedo, referring to the control the ensemble had over the crowd.
Acevedo has several years of experience in the Mariachi Invitational with other professional groups, which helped open the gate for Mariachi Los Paisanos to participate.
“I wanted them to experience what I did, and how this competition changed my life...and for the aspects of how they treat Mariachi members. If we could ever get to this point, then we would have arrived at the next level,” said Acevedo.
“I am ready to put the group out there in front of thousands of people....it was a dream for me to see the group do that and see how they lifted each other up. It was like a sports team.”
With the Invitational being professional-level, Acevedo noted that judging is cut-throat and typically less lenient than a collegiate or academic-level competition. Of course, this makes the group’s successful finish even more impressive, considering they were up against national groups in a contest where only the best would win.
“I’m still reliving all those moments with them–how happy and how proud they were of UTSA. All the alumni came up to us afterwards when they [announced] our name,” said Acevedo.
With UTSA Giving Day 2024 looming next week, fans and university supporters will have the opportunity to donate to the Mariachi program and help open more doors of opportunity for the students. These include more professional competitions and performances at festivals with large crowds around the U.S.
“They
all know the standard now, and we’re just gonna keep getting better.”
April’s alumni spotlight shines on Bronwyn White, soprano for Opera San Antonio and voice soloist.
White graduated of 2011 from UTSA with a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance. She earned her Master of Music in Opera and Voice from the Purchase College Conservatory of Music at SUNY. She then continued her training through a series of artist residencies and apprenticeships, earning an Artist Diploma in Opera from TCU along her journey to becoming a professional artist. White has also won numerous accolades in competitions, with her most recent being first place in Opera Division for the Young Texas Artists Music Competiton in 2022.
While she was completing her Bachelor’s degree, White performed on multiple occasions with UTSA Music’s Ly-
ric Theatre program. Her most memorable roles while at UTSA included Despina in Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, Mable in Pirates of Penzance, and a role in A Brief History Root Vegetables, a comic opera composed by former UTSA professor David Heuser. White performed early as an undergraduate.
“It was great to sing Despina as a sophmore,” said White. “The reason I chose UTSA was because I wanted to be on stage, and I didn’t want to go to a school where you’re not going to be able perform on stage in any serious capacity until you’re at least a senior.”
Experience in programs such as “Opera on the Road” benefited White later down the line since many elements directly translated to aspects of her career as a vocalist. Outreach was another part of her activities as a student that later became one of her occasional duties working with professional opera companies, such as promotional performances for donors and spur ticket sales for productions.
“Those are things I’ve done a million times since at pretty much every single company I’ve ever worked for,” White recalled. “It’s super helpful being able to perform in many different environments.”
It isn’t uncommon for young artists in an opera company to begin with these smaller outreach programs, which can eventually lead to acquiring a role on stage. The many different performance and environmental situations that an opera singer encounters requires experience and healthy habits and routines to maintain
a high level of performance.
White’s private voice instructor at UTSA was Professor Emeritus Linda Poetschke, who taught at UTSA from 1984 untill 2016. She was was in school with several other successful alumni, such as Rafael Moras, Michelle Lange, and then-graduate students Jordan Laine Howell, and Jordan Bryant.
After finishing her undergraduate studies, White moved to New York City, where she would have the benefit of being in close proximity to many opportunities.
“I wanted to be where there were a lot of auditions that I didn’t have to travel for. I could just take a little time off work or go on the weekend to audition,” said White.
Auditioning for many opportunities proved to be valuable experience for White later on, who says doing more of them is the best way to learn. By repeting the process, White was able to develop strategies that would give her the best possible chance of success in an auditiion. White advises current students who will face auditions in the future to “sing things you really like.” She noted how young artists program typically require five arias in five different languages for auditions. While in New York, White also did numerous mock auditions organized by different singers and an accompanist. She points to these as another great preparation strategy.
After earning her master’s from the SUNY in 2013 and residing in New York for several years, White returned to Texas to work on her Artist Diploma from Texas Christian University from 2015-2017. She also took on several different young artist programs and music festival residencies. Her first of these was the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine, where she was a resident artist fellow in 2015. She was also a festival artist at the Natchez Opera Festival and Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre in 2016 and 2017, respectively. White became a Hattie Mae Lesley Apprentice Artist in 2017, a training program for emerging opera vocalists that involves being contracted by the Fort Worth Opera to perform on certain programs while receiving voice coaching. White was also contracted as a resident artist in the 2019 iSing! International Young Artist Festival in Suzhou, China.
White’s most recent work at Opera San Antonio includes her role as Sandman in the 2023 production of Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel as Sandman and Countess Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto in 2022.
In addition to White’s opera work, she often performs as a soloist in recitals and concerts. She enjoys being able to partner with local arts organizations for many of these recitals.
“I do recitals because I enjoy programming music that you may not see on stage a lot,” said White. “If you do recitals you can do things that are more obscure, along with well-known works.”
White enjoys working with contemporary composers and performance artists. She’s worked numerous times with UTSA Arts on performance art-music pieces at exhibitions. She’s done work on multiple audio recordings that were released. She even worked on an NFT token with Verdigris Ensemble that involved a mix of different recordings across numerous music genres. White advocates for exploring the many opportunities that exist for vocalists to find work and express themselves creatively.
“As
a college student I wasn’t aware of how much there is out there besides singing in Opera companies as a soloist,” said White. “There’s many other [opportunities] that are just as rewarding.”
- Rolando Ramon
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Conard 7:30 PM | UTSA Recital Hall
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