In the ongoing production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Teatro Nacional Sucre of Quito, Ecuador, the opera takes a new garb in my transcription for an orchestra of Andean instruments, following the foundational concept of 2008 by the music director of the Orquesta de Instrumentos Andinos, Segundo Condor, who died without completing it.  The process enjoyed wonderful assistance by artists affiliated to the Teatro and the Orquesta, Tadashi Maeda and Leonardo Cárdenas, among others. The paradigm of the […]

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Last weekend, April 26-28, I was fortunate to participate as an invited presenter on Arvo Pärt in the conference “1968 in Europe and Latin America”, organized by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame.  Brilliantly designed by Professor James McAdams, somehow the conference helped me understand the direction of my life and the values I hold. It was amazing to trade insights with a fantastic roster of speakers and engage in a conversation about Hans Werner Henze  with […]

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Historian Jaqui Shine pays a beautiful homage to both her mother and artist Mark Rothko in her meditation about Rothko’s site-specific painting installation named Rothko Chapel. She distills in surprising ways a description about art connecting with the sacred. Rothko’s visual work is so powerful that it spilled inspiration upon a musical work, composer Morton Feldman’s piece for chorus and instruments carrying the same name. I had the privilege of conducting it with Notre Dame Vocale and Ensemble ND at […]

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This lecture was given by Arvo Pärt during commencement at St Vladimir’s Seminary in 2014. He shared thoughts from his musical diaries. It begins with a most powerful question: Have you thanked God for this failure already? Food for thought, because we always must ask the question, what is Art for? http://www.ccwatershed.org/blog/2017/jul/6/most-sensitive-musical-instrument/  

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