PROJECTS

CHAMBER MUSIC

REVERON PIANO TRIO

The Reverón Piano Trio’s main goal is to introduce American audiences to underrepresented music from Latin America alongside new works and standard repertoire. Its members, Ana Maria Otamendi, Simón Gollo and Horacio Contreras hold faculty positions at Louisiana State University, New Mexico University, and Lawrence University, respectively. The trio has been in residency at the University of Wisconsin, Dickinson College, Lawrence University, Louisiana State University, and has given many recitals, lectures, and masterclasses in the United States and Aruba. Upcoming projects include their first trio recording produced and distributed globally by OneRPM, a Texas tour, and residencies at various universities in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

 

The combined experience of the members of the trio include major solo, chamber, and orchestral collaborations, as well as master classes at some of the most prestigious schools in the world including Juilliard, Michigan, Oberlin, and Bloomington. Moreover, the trio members are musical entrepreneurs that run their own festivals; they have played major roles at Venezuelan El Sistema and other programs that give a social mission to classical music education; scholars that have produced major contributions in the area of Latin American classical music, as well as articles published in journals of geophysics and anthropology; and pedagogues that have published works on major publishing houses and who have presented about teaching and learning at major music conferences. The Reverón trio uses this rich and diverse background to offer a high quality musical and educational experience that at the same time promotes cultural dialogue and understanding through lectures and Q&As. The members of the Reverón Trio want to be part of change in the world, and bring about and nurture the process of awareness of diversity as a very positive component of society and art. Music from different cultures opens a space for dialogue, common ground, and empathy, and fosters dialogue and understanding.

 

The Trio is named after Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón (1899-1954). Reverón was one of the earliest American modernists, and according to John Elderfield, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art in New York:

 

“By the time of his death, in 1954, Reverón was beginning to be celebrated in Venezuela both for the radicalism of his early paintings and for the mysteriousness of his late works, and he would soon be recognized as that nation’s greatest early modernist.”

 

Early in his artistic career, Reverón painted coastal landscapes with monochromatic palettes imitative of the bright white light of the seashore. These highly tactile paintings are unique in early modernism, and seem to anticipate later monochromatic abstract art. By the time Reverón died in 1954, he was touted as both insider and outsider, academically trained but self-developed, the creator of a persona that in the end he was unable to live without. Despite the fact that Reverón is now regarded as a highly influential figure in Latin America, his work is not celebrated outside the borders of Venezuela. Similarly, the music of Latin America is underrepresented, especially in the piano trio literature. It is our wish to enhance multicultural understanding and increase the visibility of Reverón’s work and of Latin American music through the commission of new compositions, performances, masterclasses, and audio recordings.

Previous Collaborations

Cuarteto Q-Arte

Since its formation in 2010, the Q-Arte Quartet has been characterized in the exploration, diffusion and interpretation of Latin American and contemporary music introducing new sonorities and scenic profiles. The quartet combines the academic rigor of a string quartet, with the vibrant roots that characterize Latin America. His repertoire includes more than ninety works by Latin American composers, which have been interpreted in different scenarios, making the Quartet an ambassador of this music around the world

 

Q-Arte is made up of professors linked to the National University of Colombia, the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the Universidad de los Andes. The teaching work of its members has prompted the Quartet to collaborate in various training workshops aimed at new generations of musicians. Additionally, it is the manager of the international festival of string quartets FestiQ-Artetos, a biannual event that has been held since 2014.

 

The quartet Q-Arte studied under the guidance of Richard Young, member of the Vermeer Quartet (USA), and has maintained an academic and artistic dialogue with important groups such as the Latin American Quartets, Kronos, Borodin, Avalon, Miami, Casals and Quiroga. Among his record productions are: “Gustavo Leone: String Quartets”; “4 + 1” Contemporary Music for clarinet and string quartet of Latin American composers; and “Tango Sacro”.