SKU: GI.G-1064

UPC: 785147006428.

From the music of the Buena Vista Social Club to Gloria Estefan, the lyrical melodies and infectious rhythms of Cuban music have become embedded in U.S. culture. With Caminemos con Jesús / Let Us Walk with Jesus, composer Tony Alonso presents a groundbreaking collection of liturgical music that calls on his own Cuban musical heritage to provide new ways of singing the liturgy in Spanish, English or bilingually. The first project of its kind, Caminemos con Jesús not only utilizes rich Cuban idioms but also explores what style and musical form can teach us about praying together across cultural and linguistic boundaries. The dynamic call-and-response form that is a hallmark of traditional Cuban music makes these songs especially compelling choices for bilingual worship, allowing assemblies to learn, internalize, and pray easily in both Spanish and English. “Qué Alegría Cuando Me Dijeron / I Rejoiced When I Heard Them Say” uses the words of the psalm as a rhythmic mantra, creating a fresh and engaging way to gather as the Body of Christ. “Letanía a la Madre de las Américas / Litany of Mary of The Americas,” invokes the Mary of many names and nations with a simple yet strong response that will enliven Marian feasts throughout the year. The gentle simplicity of “Tres Guajiros / Three Peasants” re-imagines the story of the Magi as humble peasants bringing gifts of the land to honor the newborn Jesus. Also, in this collection and for the first time in published form, is Gloria Estefan’s “Caridad,” a powerful and poetic prayer to Our Lady of Charity, the patroness of Cuba. All of the pieces of this collection focus on the importance of bringing the voices of the assembly to the forefront while the arrangements are skillfully crafted to be accessible to musicians of all abilities. In addition to the spiral-bound edition, individual octavos, and flute and brass parts, Caminemos con Jesús offers a special edition featuring parts for guitar, percussion and other instruments central to Cuban music. The studio recording is a stunning source of prayer and inspiration, produced in Miami by Grammy Award winner Juan Delgado and featuring some of the finest Cuban-American musicians today.  GIA Publications, Inc. is committed to responding to the rich diversity of the contemporary Church. With Caminemos con Jesús, we offer you our very best bilingual music for the liturgical year.  “The music of my father’s Cuban homeland has been the language of my heart for as long as I can remember. These songs infuse that rich tradition with the unique sabor of my own experience as a Cuban-American in a distinctly liturgical shape that I hope will inspire others in their daily camino con Jesús.” –Tony Alonso Featuring “Live Mercy, Be Holy / Vive la Misericordia, Vive la Santidad,” the 2020 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress theme song! Desde la música de Buena Vista Social Club hasta la de Gloria Estefan, las melodías líricas y ritmos contagiosos de la música cubana son incrustados en la cultura estadounidense. Con Caminemos con Jesús / Let Us Walk with Jesus, el compositor Tony Alonso presenta una colección innovadora de música litúrgica que incorpora su herencia musical cubana para producir una manera nueva de cantar la liturgia — en español, inglés o bilingüemente. El primer proyecto de este tipo, Caminemos con Jesús no sólo utiliza modismos ricos de Cuba sino también explora lo que el estilo y la forma musical nos pueden enseñar con respeto a rezar juntos a través de los límites culturales y lingüísticos.  La forma dinámica de llamada-y-respuesta que es un sello distintivo de la música cubana tradicional crea opciones cautivadoras para los rituales bilingües donde la asamblea puede aprender, interiorizar y rezar facilmente tanto en español como en inglés. “Qué Alegría Cuando Me Dijeron” incorpora la letra del salmo como una mantra rítmica, creando una manera original para congregar al Cuerpo de Cristo. La “Letanía a la Madre de las Américas,” la cual invoca a la María de muchos nombres y naciones utilizando una respuesta sencilla y fuerte, enriquecerá a las fiestas marianas de muchos pueblos durante todo el año. La sencillez suave de “Tres Guajiros” reimagina la historia de los Reyes Magos como guajiros humildes, trayendo regalos de la tierra para honrar al recién nacido Jesús. También se encuentra en esta colección, por la primera vez en forma publicada, el tema musical “Caridad” por Gloria Estefan, que es una oración poderosa y poética a Nuestra Madre de Caridad, la patrona de Cuba. Todas las piezas en esta colección se enfocan en la importancia de las voces de la asamblea mientras los arreglos son accesibles para los músicos de todas habilidades. Además de la edición con espiral, las partituras corales individuales, y las ediciones para flauta y instrumentos de metal, Caminemos con Jesús también ofrece una edición para guitarra con partituras adicionales para percusión y otros instrumentos centrales en la música cubana. La grabación del estudio es espectacular, una fuente de oración y inspiración. Producido en Miami por el ganador de Grammy Juan Delgado, el álbum destaca los talentos de unos de los mejores músicos cubano-americanos de hoy día.  GIA Publications, Inc. está comprometido a responder a la diversidad rica de la Iglesia actual. En Caminemos con Jesús, les ofrecemos nuestra mejor música bilingüe para todo el año litúrgico. “La música de la tierra cubana de mi padre ha sido el lenguaje de mi corazón desde que yo tengo memoria. Estas canciones infunden esa rica tradición del sabor único de mi propia experiencia como cubanoamericano con una forma claramente litúrgica. Es mi deseo que esta obra inspire a los demás en su propio camino diario con Jesús”. –Tony Alonso  Incluye el canto tema, “Vive la Misericordia, Vive la Santidad / Live Mercy, Be Holy,” compuesto para el Congreso de Educación Religiosa de Los Angeles del 2020. CONTENTS / CONTENIDO: Arriba los Corazones / We Lift Up Our Hearts • Caminemos con Jesús / Let Us Walk with Jesus • Cántico de Daniel / Canticle of Daniel • Caridad / Our Lady of Charity • Letanía del Santo Nombre de Jesús / Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus • Letanía a la Madre de las Américas / Litany to the Mother of the Americas • Qué Alegría Cuando Me Dijeron / I Rejoiced When I Heard them Say • Una Gran Nube de Testigos / A Wondrous Cloud of Witnesses • Tres Guajiros / Three Peasants • Vayan Por el Mundo Entero / Go Out to All the World • Vive la Misericordia, Vive la Santidad / Live Mercy, Be Holy.  .

SKU: PR.11441690S

UPC: 680160626021. 9 x 12 inches.

Ran's third string quartet was written for the Pacifica Quartet, who are featuring it in numerous performances from May 2014 through February 2016, across the country and abroad. Their blog page dedicated to the work also features the composer's notes, for more indepth insight. ...impassioned solos emerge from ominous quiet, and high arpeggios in the violins quiver alongside the earthy cello. Ms. Ran skillfully deploys these extremes of color, volume and pitch, yet the overall somewhat chilly impression is one of poise. -- Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times.
My third string quartet was composed at the invitation of the Pacifica Quartet, whose music-making I have come to know closely and admire hugely as resident artists at the University of Chicago.  Already in our early conversations Pacifica proposed that this quartet might, in some manner, refer to the visual arts as a point of germination.  Probing further, I found out that the quartet members had special interest in art created during the earlier part of the 20th century, perhaps between the two world wars.  It was my good fortune to have met, a short while later, while in residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall of 2011, art conservationist Albert Albano who steered me to the work of Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), a German-Jewish painter who, like so many others, perished in the Holocaust at a young age, and who left some powerful, deeply moving art that spoke to the life that was unraveling around him. The title of my string quartet takes its inspiration from a major exhibit devoted to art by German artists of the period of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) titled “Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s”, first shown at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006-07.  Nussbaum would have been a bit too young to be included in this exhibit.  His most noteworthy art was created in the last very few years of his short life.  The exhibit’s evocative title, however, suggested to me the idea of “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory” as a way of framing a possible musical composition that would be an homage to his life and art, and to that of so many others like him during that era.  Knowing that their days were numbered, yet intent on leaving a mark, a legacy, a memory, their art is triumph of the human spirit over annihilation. Parallel to my wish to compose a string quartet that, typically for this genre, would exist as “pure music”, independent of a narrative, was my desire to effect an awareness in my listener of matters which are, to me, of great human concern.  To my mind there is no contradiction between the two goals.  As in several other works composed since 1969, this is my way of saying ‘do not forget’, something that, I believe, can be done through music with special power and poignancy.    The individual titles of the quartet’s four movements give an indication of some of the emotional strands this work explores. 1) “That which happened” (das was geschah) – is how the poet Paul Celan referred to the Shoah – the Holocaust.  These simple words served for me, in the first movement, as a metaphor for the way in which an “ordinary” life, with its daily flow and its sense of sweet normalcy, was shockingly, inhumanely, inexplicably shattered. 2) “Menace” is a shorter movement, mimicking a Scherzo.  It is also machine-like, incessant, with an occasional, recurring, waltz-like little tune – perhaps the chilling grimace we recognize from the executioner’s guillotine mask.  Like the death machine it alludes to, it gathers momentum as it goes, and is unstoppable. 3) ”If I must perish - do not let my paintings die”; these words are by Felix Nussbaum who, knowing what was ahead, nonetheless continued painting till his death in Auschwitz in 1944.  If the heart of the first movement is the shuddering interruption of life as we know it, the third movement tries to capture something of what I can only imagine to be the conflicting states of mind that would have made it possible, and essential, to continue to live and practice one’s art – bearing witness to the events.  Creating must have been, for Nussbaum and for so many others, a way of maintaining sanity, both a struggle and a catharsis – an act of defiance and salvation all at the same time. 4) “Shards, Memory” is a direct reference to my quartet’s title.  Only shards are left.  And memory.  The memory is of things large and small, of unspeakable tragedy, but also of the song and the dance, the smile, the hopes.  All things human.  As we remember, in the face of death’s silence, we restore dignity to those who are gone.—Shulamit Ran .