Vazquez / Granillo / Derbez / Onix Ensemble - Labyrinths - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Putting together a new album is, as writers and composers often say, like Inchfacing a blank pageInch. One must visualize the possible repertoire, think and re-think, decant and finally find a sense of unity within a whole that is made up of the diverse. In this context, one has to encode to decode. In the same way, one must receive, with patience and care, the hidden message that comes from afar, through sounds, atmospheres, timbres and textures cutting the air to talk about what words cannot capture, to remind us that each imaginary space is inhabited by sound worlds that are there to be discovered or revisited. In Encodings, six works by Mexican composers converge and they are nothing more than invitations to undertake a trip to the inside of the cello, to it's most intimate sonorities. The journey will take us to a re-discovery of the primordial fire, to an encounter with a language on verge of disappearing, which is at the same time distant and close, while we pass through a tormented monologue with all it's introspective landscapes, to the white noise of everyday reality. The six pieces collected in here, reflect in different ways part of the voice and artistic expression of at least three generations of Mexican composers. To them, to those who decode the silence, my most sincere gratitude.

Onix Ensamble - Equinox [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/29/2013

This recording is about contrast. Universes of timbres, harmonies, colors, rhythms and textures; acoustic music, electroacoustic, concrete, mixed; leading composers alongside burgeoning ones; Mexican and Argentine; traditional and alternative notations; complex hearing and simple listening; traditional techniques and extended ones; festive, dreamlike, sweet, terrifying, hopeful, pessimistic expression of sound... a violin and it's player. Such are the characteristics of the music in this recording and, in some ways, the sound representation of Abel Romero excellent orchestral and chamber violinist, experienced child and youth pedagogue, with a profound knowledge of and gusto for both the traditional repertoire and the contemporary. Works by Lavista, Barcenas, Macias, Mary, Baca and Caballero concur, in all their multiplicity, on common ground with this great Mexican violinist. The works here presented, through their wise interpretation, all together form a diverse collection of music where unity is achieved, precisely, through the constant presence of contrast.