My music, an autobiography: Arturo Márquez

My dreams to fulfill are to compose an opera with a libretto that captivates me, a piano concerto and a second symphony.shares in an interview with The Day the composer Arturo Márquez, who was awarded two Latin Grammys in the categories of best classical music album and best classical composition for Fandango for violin and orchestra.

At this moment I am composing a double bass concerto for a young Venezuelan living in Berlin. I have orders for two years, it could be for more, but I don’t want to go further, I prefer to go little by little and make time to fulfill my personal concerns. When I accept a work it is because in some way I already have a path to followhe adds.

Fandango was a request from Anne Akiko Meyers, an American violinist named by the magazine The Strad the wonder woman of the orders. The best part, he mentions, was having her as a soloist and working with Gustavo Dudamel (Venezuela, 1981), director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with whom he has shared other collaborations and is considered one of the best performers of his work.

“Dudamel played Danzón no. 2 in his first concert of the season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Akiko Meyers heard it and said, ‘I want a violin concert based on mariachi.’ I don’t know why it occurred to him, well I do know: in Los Angeles they associate us a lot with mariachi.

This request suited me like a glove, because the violin was my first instrument; My father played the violin in the mariachi, I had known Dudamel for many years and she was a virtuoso concert pianist, everything fit together perfectly.

Consider that Fandango It is a great tribute to tradition, party, dance, stage, zapateado and son. I had to print movement and expression.

The first part of the piece represents The Caribbean, with a rhythmic melody, he explains. He describes the second moment as something melancholic, inspired by mariachi huapangos, like The Malagueña o Red sky. The third takes the name of a son in Veracruz: Fandanguito, which is characterized by its violin solos.

I’m kind of a bi-musical composer. I am in both worlds. The first arrived the day I was born and they serenaded my mother; I began to cultivate the second at the age of 14, when I began to study music in the United States, Mexico and Paris.

He summarizes his scores: In each one I have said what I am experiencing at that moment. It may sound simplistic, but it is a kind of autobiography. That is my experience since the 80s, it remains in the 90s and since 2000 I feel more like talking about my social and political position..

The danzón and its relationship with the world

He states that the danzones are the ones that best reflect the way he relates to the world in everyday life, for example, number 2, dedicated to his daughter Lily Márquez, which was premiered by the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Ofunam ) on March 5, 1994. I composed it in January and February of that year, and the country was going through a conflictive period: the uprising of the Zapatistas. People’s attachment to this piece is related to the hope I had at that moment..

The four movements of the Cantata dreams, in which he alludes to the dreams of leaders who fought for human rights, such as Guillermo Velázquez, Mexican troubadour; Chief Seattle, Native American leader in the second half of the 19th century; Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Others, like Marches of mourning and anger y From Juárez to Maximiliano, They have to do with the reading I give to historical events in Mexico and the world.

Since the 1990s, Márquez has fused popular and academic music, but when he was in a contemporary dance company he composed a work that his friends Irene Martínez and Iván Fonseca told him was a danzón, very different, because it was at a different pace, but they started me in that aspect.

Nine danzones followed that piece, including the Danzón no. 2, which arose at the request of Ofunam.

Regarding how danzón has evolved in contemporary Mexican culture, Arturo Márquez states: “popular danzón remains; Some of the halls no longer exist, but there are still plazas, the love of many dancers everywhere, from Mérida to Tijuana. It is a very noble genre, which has remained faithful to tradition.

I would have liked it to evolve a little more, both in dance and music, but it is a personal wish that does not have to be. A bit like what happened with tango, we have a traditional one and a more evolved one.

The composer assures that the number 2 or the number 8 are special for him, but works are like children: there may be favorites, of course there are, but we don’t talk about that.