World Music Concert 2

Erika Bergeron
World Music 330
11/6/2014

Concert Report #2 On November 5th 2014 Sac State University’s Department of Music performed a Latin Jazz Ensemble. They also had American Rivers Latin Jazz Ensemble, and California State University of Los Angeles’s Ensemble perform as well. The Sacramento State Ensemble played a range of Latin music styles like, merengue, cha-cha, mambo, Afro Cuban, and the rumba. CSULA performed some Afro- Carribean music such as Salsa, Timba, and Latin Jazz. American Rivers Ensemble performed songs from Latin Jazz and Afro-Cuban traditions. They played some original compositions by Tito Puente, and Oscar Hernandez along with some of their own arrangements. American River performed two songs Mas Blues by Oscar Hernandez, and Joseito arranged by Scott Martin. American Rivers Ensemble had 16 people playing instruments, four different saxophones including: an alto, two tenor, and a bari sax. They also had two trumpets, and two trombones. Six people were on the percussion instruments, along with one bass player, and one piano player. The two songs that they played were very upbeat, and made me want to get up and dance. These two songs that American River performed were very fast in tempo and definitely got the audience engaged. Sac State’s Ensemeble performed three songs these were: Summertime by George Gershwin with an arrangement by Carlos McCoy, Songomania by Rebeca Mauleon, and Rumba Urbana by Oscar Hernandez. Sac States ensemble had a much smaller group of individuals performing but the performance they gave didn’t lack in any way. Throughout the performance I noticed there was a lot of trumpet, and the piano was a lot faster in the song Summertime. It reminded me of salsa music, something you could dance to with a fast beat. In Songomania there was a lot of Piano, and Drums I loved when they performed this song because most of the instrument players got independent solos to show off their talents. Overall Sac States performance and songs sounded more traditional and slower. They had two trumpet players, one saxophone, trombone, piano, one bass, congas, timbales, and one person playing drums. CSULA’s Afro Latin Ensemble performed Donde Estabas Tu by ErnestoDuarte, Odiame with the arrangement of Edgar Hernandez, Camina y Prende el Fogon by Benigno Echemendia, Moiendo Café by Hugo Blanco, La Hija de Lola Raul Marrero, and Cuando te Vea by Tito Puente. All of CSULA’s performances reminded me of salsa music, the piano was very overpowering. These songs were very fast, with the singing it almost felt like I was sitting in a restaurant having a good time. They had five people singing, four people on woodwind instruments, four people on Brass instruments, one person playing the guitar, one person on piano, two people playing brass instruments, and five people on percussion instruments. Afro Cuban Jazz rhythmically is based on asymmetrical lines, with a rhythm section of ostinato patterns from Cuban dance music. Throughout the performance I noticed the musicians started by playing a standard melody, many others play an improvised solo, and then everyone played the melody again. It seemed like the percussion instruments were featured in a solo pretty often. I noticed in the performance they used two hardwood sticks, or claves; these hold the rhythm together. A lot of the songs were played in a duple-pulse structure (4/4, 2/4, or 2/2). This concert was pretty awesome, it was upbeat the dynamics of the music were very loud as in powerful and intense. With how fast the tempo was of the songs they were very lively, quick, and busy. At times you had one instruments playing a solo, and the next thing would be everyone playing the melody together. The rhythm of the music had a very strong beat, and had a homophony texture where two or more parts moved together in harmony, which created the chords in the music. Overall I think I would definitely go to another Latin Jazz concert, it was a really fun setting to be in and how intense and powerful the music was really captured my attention, and even had me tapping my feet and nodding my head.