PROGRAM
Estampas nocturnas - Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948)
La noche (The Night)
En tiempos del rey sol (In the time of the Sun King)
Arrulladora (Lullaby)
Scherzo de Puck (Puck’s Scherzo)
Ballard Civic Orchestra
Paula Madrigal, conductor
From 15 Estudios para piano sobre ritmos y formas de la tradición musical argentina - Ariel Ramírez (1921-2010)
(15 Piano Etudes on Rhythms and Forms of the Argentinean Musical Tradition (1975)):
I. Gato
II. Bailecito
III. Cueca
VI. Vidala
VII. Penatónico (re menor)
VIII. Pentatónico (mi bemol menor)
IX. Malambo
XIV. Chamamé
XV. Zamba
Malambo (1943)
El pampeano (1944)
Barbara Mirano, piano
Otoño porteño, from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires - Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992),
arr. for piano four-hands by G. Mutto
Barbara Mirano and Alejandro Cremaschi, piano
Bodeo Julio de Caro (1899-1980), arr. Horacio Salgán
La Cachila Eduardo Arolas (1892-1924), arr. Salgán
La Cumparsita Gerardo Matos-Rodriguez (1897-1948)
Milonga del Ángel Astor Piazzolla
Malambo Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Alejandro Cremaschi, piano
From Histoire du Tango: Piazzolla, arr. for violin and piano by D. Varelas
III. Nightclub 1960
Maria Sampen, violin and Ronaldo Rolim, piano
Canción en el puerto (Song at the Port) Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras (1927-2012)
Alistair MacRae, cello and Ronaldo Rolim, piano
Trio brasileiro Oscar Lorenzo Fernández (1897-1948)
I . Allegro Maestoso
II. Canção – (Andante)
III. Dança – (Scherzo)
IV. Final
Puget Sound Piano Trio
Maria Sampen, violin
Alistair MacRae, cello
Ronaldo Rolim, piano
About the Artist
Ballard Civic Orchestra
The Ballard Civic Orchestra is a professional and volunteer orchestra led by music director Paula Madrigal, which features Latinx music, guest artists and composers while highlighting Latino musical arts and culture. The Ballard Civic Orchestra strives to connect with its culturally diverse audience through music and the arts.
Paula Madrigal
Paula Madrigal is a Mexican-American conductor who has studied music and education in Mexico, Spain, and the U.S. While pursuing her career goals as a conductor, she has been a disciple of some of the most important Mexican conductors, including Guillermo Salvador and Enrique Arturo Dimecke. Ms. Madrigal holds a bachelor's degree in cello performance from the University of Guadalajara and a Masters Degree from Universidad Autonoma of Guadalajara. She is passionate about classical music and Latino culture. As a cellist, teaching artist, and conductor, she has created and participated in numerous projects, providing classical music experiences that promote inclusion and intercultural understanding in Mexico and in the U.S.
In 2014 she founded the Seattle World Youth Orchestra program for talented youth in Seattle. She also co-founded Orquesta Northwest in 2019 and has served as the Artistic Director of its programs and projects, including the annual Latino Chamber Music Festival, Ballard Civic Orchestra, North Seattle Mariachi, World Youth Orchestra, annual Cascade Conducting & Composing Masterclass.
Ms. Madrigal has received multiple grants and awards from the Office of Arts & Culture in Seattle, Univision, the Latino Community Fund, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Conductors award from Opera America for the Opera Frida. She has served for multiple years as a Seattle Music Commissioner. In 2021she joined Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab where she conducted the premieres of nine new works, including the first chamber opera composed by a black composer.
Ms. Madrigal’s performing and conducting are charged by the joys and passions of the Latino culture. The art she presents is a complete experience for the audience. With this, she aims to create a profound social impact. She has a deep interest in making music that affects consciousness and explores a mixture of tradition with the modernity of technology and new ideas. Her art expresses the integration of her Mexican heritage and her American everyday life. As an artist wishing to express ideas, social justice and the value of excellence are her goals. Her repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporánean, including choral works and Latin music. She currently is conducting the chamber opera Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun and will be a guest conductor for the Northwest Mahler Festival in June 2025.
Dr. Barbara Mirano
Pianist and Kitsap local Dr. Barbara Mirano (D.A.) has performed as a soloist throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond, including appearances with the Kitsap Philharmonic and the Juneau Piano Series in Juneau, Alaska. Having a wide and versatile repertoire, Dr. Mirano accompanies for the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle, Washington, and has been featured in Dance Informa Magazine. In addition, she is a dedicated piano teacher who enjoys passing on the traditions of her former teachers, which include Irene Bowling, Raymond Kilburn, John Pickett, and Sławomir Dobrzański.
Alejandro Cremaschi
Alejandro Cremaschi, NCTM, teaches piano and piano pedagogy, and coordinates the class piano area and the Youth Piano Program at the University of Colorado Boulder as Professor of Piano Pedagogy. He received a Doctor of Musical Arts and a Master of Music degrees from the University of Minnesota, where he studied with Lydia Artymiw. Previously, he studied with Nancy Roldan at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and with Dora De Marinis at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Argentina.
Dr. Cremaschi is an active performer and researcher of the music of Latin America. His playing has been described as “pristine” and “passionate” by the Washington Post, and “polished” and “exemplary” by the Fanfare magazine. He was a prize winner at the International Beethoven Sonata Piano Competition in Memphis, Tennessee in 2001. He has recorded music by Carlos Guastavino, Alberto Ginastera, Luis Gianneo, Luis Jorge González and other Argentine composers as a soloist and chamber pianist for the labels IRCO, Ostinato, Marco Polo and Meridian Records. He is a founding member and the Executive Director for Sonus International Music Festival, an online festival and non-profit organization devoted to the dissemination of the music of Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino, and other classical music composers inspired by folk traditions.
A specialist in the areas of piano pedagogy, group piano, technology-aided instruction and cooperative learning, Dr. Cremaschi has been a frequent presenter at the National Conference in Keyboard Pedagogy, the Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy conference, the Music Teachers National Association conference, International Society for Music Education national and international conferences and other conferences. His research areas include the music of Latin America, the study and implementation of cooperative learning strategies in the piano classroom, the use of technology to aid the acquisition of piano skills, and the influence of self-efficacy beliefs in piano students' practice, motivation and achievement. His reviews and articles have appeared in the Research Studies in Music Education, MTNA e-Journal, California Music Teacher, Keyboard Companion, Clavier, the American Music Teacher magazines, the European Piano Teachers Association Piano Journal, Journal of Technology in Music Learning, and the Piano Pedagogy Forum on-line journal.
His edition and recording of Alberto Ginastera's Doce Preludios Americanos for piano was published by Carl Fischer in 2016, and superseded the original 1946 original edition of this work.
In 2017 Alejandro was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award at the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s College of Arts and Humanities. He received an Outstanding Service Recognition Award from the Frances Clark Center in 2021.
The Puget Sound Piano Trio
The Puget Sound Piano Trio is the ensemble-in-residence at University of Puget Sound School of Music in Tacoma, WA. Over the Trio’s rich four-decade history, it has presented hundreds of concerts in a multitude of venues, from celebrated biannual performances on the university’s Jacobsen Concert Series to appearances in prominent concert halls throughout the United States. Trio members Maria Sampen (violin), Alistair MacRae (cello), and Ronaldo Rolim (piano) bring distinguished musical backgrounds and a rich variety of professional experiences to their work as a trio. Both individually and as the Puget Sound Piano Trio, they have appeared in concerts throughout the world, as soloists with numerous orchestras, and at major music festivals such as Aspen, Ravinia, Brevard, and Banff. Recently, they were featured soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Northwest Sinfonietta and conductor Mei-Ann Chen; and their latest visit to KING FM Seattle's Northwest Focus Live, where they have been frequent guests, was featured nationally on NPR Music Live Sessions. Upcoming and recent engagements include performances and artistic residencies at Benaroya Hall (Seattle), The Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Bowling Green State University (OH), Grand Valley State University (MI), Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (Anchorage), Roosevelt University (Chicago), and Berklee College of Music (Boston). The Puget Sound Piano Trio is equally at home performing repertoire from the standard classical canon and hot-off-the-press works of living composers. They recently completed a recording of piano trios by Marilyn Shrude, which is slated for future release. In 2023, the Trio gave the West Coast premiere of Miguel del Aguila's Barroqueada, a neo-Baroque suite infused with Latin-American dances. This became the seed of a program entirely dedicated to Latin-American music for the following season, including 21st-century works by Gabriela Ortiz and Alejandro Cardona. The Trio can also be heard on the 2020 Navona Records recording Drift, featuring Tianyi Wang's trio Dark Blessing. That same year, the group commissioned and premiered Robert Hutchinson's When April Woods Are Red for piano trio and mezzo-soprano. In addition to performing on the concert stage, the Trio is deeply committed to educational outreach. As part of this mission, the ensemble's concert tours are multifaceted in nature, often combining a string of formal concerts with free workshops, masterclasses, and school visits. The Trio's recent visits to Temple Music Prep (Philadelphia), Anchorage Youth Symphony, Tuesday Musicale of Detroit, the MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis; and schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Boulder, New Jersey, and throughout the Pacific Northwest have placed them in contact with numerous students and young people of every background. The Trio frequently interacts with educational institutions at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels in its Pacific Northwest home as well as throughout the United States, and passionately believes that music and art should be a part of every child’s education.
Ricardo de la Torre
Active as a performer, teacher, adjudicator, curator, and scholar, Dr. Ricardo de la Torre has played in concert venues in North America and Europe and has appeared as soloist with orchestras in Mexico and the U.S. A finalist and prize winner in several competitions, he has held grants and scholarships from different cultural and government institutions. He is frequently heard as part of Duo Powers-de la Torre, which he forms with Dr. Lark Powers. The duo will release its first album, dedicated to the music of Seattle-based Uruguayan-American composer Miguel del Águila, next year.
Born in Mexico City, Ricardo attended the pre-college program at Escuela Superior de Música in his hometown. He later received a Bachelor’s degree with honors from this institution. He continued his studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he received a Master of Music degree and went on to graduating with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he worked as a teaching assistant and collaborative pianist. His main teachers include Ana María Tradatti, Fernando García Torres, Evelyne Brancart and David Korevaar.
He is currently an instructor at Pacific Lutheran University and the Community Music program at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.
Also active in scholarly endeavors, Ricardo has been invited to present lectures and lecture-recitals at local, regional, national, and international conferences and has had articles published by peer-reviewed journals in Mexico, Colombia and the U.S. He regularly writes program notes for Mexico’s National Autonomous University’s professional orchestra OFUNAM.
Ricardo worked as Curator of Art and Music at Lakewold Gardens in Lakewood and directs Orquesta Northwest’s Latino Chamber Music Festival every Fall.