ORLANDO JACINTO GARCÍA (b.1954): Auschwitz for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Speaker, Chorus and Orchestra, Varadero Memories, In Memoriam Earle Brown.

Description: These pieces display a consistently original sonic imagination, and exemplify the composer's intent to explore music's capacity for existing outside time, its effect on the listener unaffected by duration or conventional progression of musical argument. To some extent this reflects his studies with Feldman, but Garcia's music is far denser harmonically, and more emotionally intense. Repeated gestures, static, highly dissonant, often cluster, chords occur frequently, but so do long-breathed statements that are best described as melodies, for want of a better term. Auschwitz begins with shattering, metallic clusters, but the main focus of the work is a timeless lament; similarly, the Memories - of a place in Cuba - exist in a place of the imagination outside of time, reinforced by repetition and with their own emotional resonance, while the relatively consonant undulating sonorities of In Memoriam suggest a static, eternal memorial to a valued colleague and friend, now present only in memory. Anjane Cecilia Girwarr (soprano), Glenda Fernandez-Vega (mezzo), Rohan A. Smith (speaker), Florida International University Concert Choir, Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra; José Serebrier.