ACC Performs with the Pan American Symphony Orchestra

The Arlington Children’s Chorus participated in a concert at the Lisner Auditorium on March 25, 2023 presented by the Pan American Symphony Orchestra (PASO) as they celebrated the lively folkloric traditions of Latin America with music inspired by typical dances from El Salvador, Mexico and Argentina with Leyendas, Heroes, y Sueños .

The ACC featured in PASO’s performance of Alas (a Malala), Wings to Malala, a piece inspired by the cumbia, a dance popular throughout Latin America. With lyrics by Marquez’s daughter, Lily, this work has proved to be an inspiration worldwide for children’s education and human rights.

The concert featured premiers by two young Salvadoran composers, Audiel Benjamin Avalos and Juan Guerra Gonzalez. In 2020, with funding from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, PASO created a competition for orchestral works by composers of Salvadoran heritage and sent out an international call. The jury selected two works. The first, El Juco, by Audiel Banjamin Avalos, is written for strings, woodwind quartet, and French horns and is based on a Salvadoran rhythm called Xuc, with a simple melody that reflects Salvadoran culture. The second, Munamikitia, by Juan Guerra Gonzalez, is based on the well-known traditional dance Chapetones de Panchimalco, which is performed during the Festival of Palms and Flowers in the town of Panchimalco and ridicules the Spanish colonizers with exaggerated movements to a delicate waltz. “

The concert also featured two works by Mexico’s most famous living composer, Arturo Marquez. Leyenda de Miliano, a 13-minute tone poem composed in 2010 for Mexico’s bicentennial of its independence from Spain, is a tribute to the revolutionary hero and champion of the Mexican underclass, Emiliano Zapata. PASO also performed Marquez’s dramatic tribute to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani youth activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. . 

 Rounding out the program, the work Tifón, by young Argentine pianist and composer Ariel Pirotti, represents dance from the northern provinces of Argentina. Pirotti, who wrote the piece while performing in Japan and enduring a typhoon, bases the music on the vidala, a popular genre of music and dance from the Andean northwest of Argentina that draws on traditions that retain their pre-Hispanic characteristics. 

This unique concert took DC-area residents on an exciting musical journey to unexplored parts of Latin American culture. Though the Washington, DC area is home to a large Salvadoran diaspora, symphonic music celebrating its rich cultural heritage is rare.