Looking for the Clave

String quintet. (2015)

Premiered at Sheldon Concert Hall, St. Louis, Missouri

To be honest, the coolest Haydn’s symphonies for me are the ones who have some kind of humor. He just got rid of that obligation of writing “serious” music and then tried to have fun and his outlet was humor. I also love when Shostakovich stops being so serious and then introduces a fast Russian dance in the middle of a section, and you can imagine a group of cossacks dancing around. Shostakovich’s use of dances was sometimes a pun on his own culture. In my case, I like to use the Latin rhythms that I learned how to dance and play when I was growing up in Colombia. I have to admit that I wasn’t always a fan, and only with time I learned how to love them and to appreciate their cultural and musical value.

This piece was written for a particular concert on the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis whose topic was Latin American music and I was in the middle of Piazzolla and Villalobos in the program—how about that? Happily, Leo Brouwer was not in the program because his string music is my inspiration. The performers were members of the St. Louis Orchestra and they were challenged by all the recurrent syncopation in the music. In spite of that, they did a great job and the result was remarkable!