Bellas Artes

I am a little late posting this but a couple of weeks ago, we spent a nice Saturday afternoon at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, my absolute favorite building in the city (so far).

It's so beautiful!!

Bellas Artes houses the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, the Orquesta da Cámara de Bellas Artes and hosts multiple theatre companies, dance companies, and art exhibits. On the third floor, there are murals by famous Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, and others.

"El hombre en el cruce de caminos" by Diego Rivera. This mural is in Bellas Artes and is one of my favorites.

When we visited Bellas Artes, there was an exhibition of the works of Rafael Coronel and we LOVED it! The way he paints people, especially their faces, is truly incredible and I haven’t really seen anything like it before. The people just jump out of the canvas at you. There was an entire room devoted to portraits that he had painted, all from this year. This room was particularly amazing because the portraits were set on black and the entire room was black with the exception of spotlights on the paintings that made them even more real and lifelike.

As you can see from this painting, he uses a lot of very bright blues and reds that make the persons in the paintings stand out even more.

He also has a lot of works such as this one where the whole painting is very blurred except for the face of the person in it.

The artist standing in front of one of the portraits that I particularly liked.

There was also an architecture exhibit on the fourth floor and though it was interesting, neither one of us are architecture aficionados so we definitely spent more time in the art exhibit!

Ceiling of the building--beautiful!

After we finished inside, we walked around the area outside of the building, which is full of street vendors selling all kinds of things.

This is only a small portion of the vendors!

We will be back at Bellas Artes for a concert this weekend of all orchestral works by Mexican composers!

Me llamo Yepts.

While I was in Xalapa and living at the hotel, a nice young Mexican girl asked me a fairly common question:

GIRL: “¿Cómo te llamas?” (How do you call yourself? or, What is your name?)

JEFF: “Me llamo Jeff” (I call myself Jeff or, My name is Jeff)

GIRL: “Yepts?”

JEFF: “Jeff.”

GIRL: “Yepts!?”

JEFF: “JEFF!”

GIRL: “Ye-p-ts.”

Facepalm

… In Mexico (or in Spanish), they do not pronounce the letter J like we do in English. In fact, the closest letter they have to our J is Y. Hence the capital Y at the beginning of “Yepts”. As for why the remainder of my name is also unpronounceable, I am just going to assume that the sounding J at the beginning of the name was so strange and difficult that it threw off her entire hearing of the rest of it. Now I know why in middle school and high school Spanish class they gave us “Spanish” names, because many of our foreign names would be so weird and difficult to pronounce in Spanish.

In English, there are some foreign words that we use verbatim, but butcher with an American accent (lots of French words come to mind like croissant or laissez-faire), and in Mexico they do the same with certain English words like Maple (“map-ley”) or the popular soda here, Squirt (“e-sqee-ert”) [thanks to Rebecca for the second example].

SQUIRT

Squirt is so popular here that it is the common ingredient in the cocktail PALOMA (which is tequila, SQUIRT, lime, and salt.)

English words are funny here, especially proper nouns. We notice it on the T.V. all the time. Sometimes they use the English words verbatim (Terminator 3 is Terminator Tres), sometimes they translate to Spanish literally (Law & Order: SVU [Special Victims Unit] is La Ley y El Orden: UVE [Unidad de Víctimas Especiales], and yet other times they translate to Spanish and also change the title to provide the meaning (thus, the movie You, Me, and Dupree [with Owen Wilson] becomes Tres son Multitud.

You, Me, & Dupree

Tres son Multitud

Of course, they use Facebook here too, which is El Facebook. It is interesting to me how they determine that the noun gender of a service where you can look at pictures of former classmates and ex-lovers is masculine…)

And, since they don’t actually have the words “Face” or “Book”, often they just call it “Face”.

“¿Tienes Face?” translates to “Do you have a Facebook account?” or “Do you have Face?”

Mary E and I really don’t know why the don’t call it Libro de Cara or Caralibro.

¿Tienes Face?

One last hilarious version of the above occurs when they take an English word or proper noun, and then not only pronounce the word with a Spanish accent/inflection, but spell it phonetically in that way as well. For example, last night we were at the churro cart in Coyoacán with our friend and resident guru of México, Rebecca, and although we are getting much better at identifying the types of fillings in the churros (names of fruits and other delicacies), I had to ask her, “What the heck is Bailes?” Are these churros filled with dancing? (The verb bailar means to dance.) Her response:

“Oh, it’s

“

BAILES

-Yepts

Things to do in Xalapa when you’re dead

Things to do in Denver when you're dead

OK so I wasn’t even nearly dead, but I was pretty sick for most of week 3, and as such I didn’t do much beyond rehearse, practice, teach, and perform (wash, rinse, repeat). Week 3 contained our Mexican music program in honor of Mexico’s Independence, but I already wrote about some of that music in my last post. One leitmotiv (??), motive, or phrase that I did learn about, which Revueltas utilizes in his work Janitzio, and which I’ve subsequently heard now quite a bit is “¡Chinga tu madre!”. Warning, you can click here for an explanation, but it’s Rated R and NSFW (not safe for work), so if you’re easily offended, just use your imagination about what this phrase means.

Rated R

In fact, just as the equivalent word in English (to the verb chingar) is highly versatile, we’ve been told that you can actually find a chinganarrio (or in English, “chinganary”) in the bookstore with all of the possible mutations, permutations, transitive uses of the verb chingar. (the more you know!)

I also mentioned that, for the start of week 3, Mary E came to Xalapa with me for a period of about 24 hours because we had no water for 3 consecutive days (no shower, no toilet, no washing dishes or clothes…nada). However distressful this was for me, I still think that Mary E should report on that incident. (Scarcity of water is a known and major issue here in Mexico City.)

Also during week 3, a tragic thing happened wherein we realized that the Teatro del Estado (state theater) where the orchestra performs was potentially unsafe and in need of repair. I got to watch some of the labor disputes first hand as 1 of our rehearsals ended early, 1 was cancelled outright, and the another was delayed by almost an hour. Fortunately, all of our consecutive rehearsals and concerts were moved outside of that edifice, as the orchestra refused to rehearse or perform there. I actually really liked the sight where we ended up performing, the Casa del Lago, which is a stone structure located downtown, by a man-made lake with a fountain. It was very beautiful and picturesque locale, even though the actual “casa” where we performed was also a little run-down.

Casa del Lago

At this point, the posts are now a little out of order. Mary E already blogged about the following weekend here. It was bittersweet, but that Sunday I had to yet again board my bus and trek back to Xalapa. Another weekend activity was that we went to see the Mexico City Phil perform Mahler’s sublime Second Symphony, which was a wonderful concert. It looks like they have a great season, and we’ll be sure to attend more concerts throughout the year.

Mexico City Phil

In my final week there we performed a series of concerts called Didacticos. They were essentially educational concerts for children and laypersons in the city, and we performed in various locations on the campus of the University of Veracruz. Apparently, there is a point system whereby the University gets money for hosting these various programs, and the members of the orchestra tell me that they perform about 40 of these concerts per season. We did 7 that week (1 was cancelled).

I had such a great time playing with the orchestra and meeting some fantastic new people, especially the principal trumpet player and trumpet professor there, also a Jeff, and his family. His wife, Patricia, is from the city of Guanajuato, and after learning a bit about that city from them over a delicious meal and other good conversation, I am really anxious to visit there with Mary E this year.

Guanajuato

Speaking of Mary E, It’s really nice to be back to our apartment in D.F. with her and our kitties. Now I have a recital to prepare and some other composition projects to work on, but I hope to keep in touch with my friends in Xalapa. I was also grateful for the opportunity to teach a few really talented students at the Institute, and it looks like through my connection with their band director, Tim, the brass choir may premiere a fanfare that I wrote recently to enter into the Dallas Wind Symphony Brass Fanfare competition. I couldn’t be more pleased with all of that. I am happy not to be living out of a hotel anymore.

They all actually know me here now.

Big Flutes!

All right, I’m sure you all knew a dorky post about flutes was coming at some point (since I am here to be doing work after all) so, here it is!

Four times a semester, the flute professor at UNAM (with whom I am studying and who will hereafter be referred to as Alejandro) does a themed session open to all students, faculty, people in the community, etc. that are interested in attending. The first session was last Tuesday and was about the larger and lesser-known instruments of the flute family: the alto flute, bass flute, flauta de pico, the glissando mouthpiece, and the CONTRABASS flute.

Alejandro asked me to play some excerpts from pieces for alto flute so I did and that went pretty well. Then, the guest artist for the flauta de pico (recorder) talked about her instrument, which is a Paetzold bass recorder (either in C or F, I’m not sure). This instrument is amazing! It is played with a mouthpiece and has a wide variety of sound possibilities. In recent years, it has become attractive to contemporary composers because of its flexibility and the fact that it works very well with electronics. The sound is quite low and is usually amplified. Here is a picture:

Paetzold bass recorder--it was really fun to play!

And here is a link to a piece for Paetzold flutes and electronics:

Afterwards, Alejandro talked about and introduced the bass flute to the audience. I really like the bass flute and have played it before, but it definitely hurts my wrists after a short period of time–it’s pretty heavy!

Bass flute--no, this is not solid gold, don't get excited!

Then he introduced the contrabass flute–ridiculously cool. As you can imagine, it is quite low and also needs to be played with amplification in order to be heard. Solo literature does not really exist for this instrument, though pieces for contrabass flute and electronics can be found.

This instrument is monstrous!

As you can probably tell, there is a piece that fits over your leg so that it can bear part of the weight of the instrument. I'm sure you can also play it standing up like Alejandro is in the photo but sitting down is more common.

Finally, Alejandro demonstrated the glissando headjoint, invented by flutist and pedagogue Robert Dick. There is a portion of the headjoint that the flutist can slide while playing to alter the pitches higher or lower. Interestingly enough, it does not alter each pitch the same amount: some pitches can be altered about two whole steps in either direction while others can just be altered by about a step. I’m no physicist, but I’m pretty sure this has to do with the construction of the instrument and how much of the instrument is closed/opened depending on what keys are being pressed.

This headjoint is bought alone and can then just be put on a regular C flute like any other headjoint. By the way, I really want one of these. Christmas, birthday anyone??!

And finally, here is a link to Robert Dick demonstrating this mouthpiece:

Shout Outs

2 Blog Recommendations: (blogs we enjoy, and that took the time to mention us)

The Five-One Music Blog

Read insightful comments on new music.

Or in México: cinco-uno

One Small Oatsvall Family

 

One not-so-small Oatsvall

Read insightful comments from some youths in the midwest.

Happy procrastinating! reading!

Veracruz Control

This is my FOURTH consecutive week of commuting back and forth from el D.F. to Xalapa, Veracruz, via autobús, to perform with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa.

OSX Tuba Folder

I now know the city a bit better (by foot), and I’ve formed friendships with some of my great colleagues in the orchestra. Personally, it’s been a thrill to play some Mexican music in a Mexican orchestra. I especially enjoyed playing JANITZIO by Silvestre Revueltas and, of all things, the American composer Aaron Copland’s EL SALÓN MÉXICO!

During my first week here, we performed in standard concert attire: tuxedos (for men, obviously.) For the weeks following, the dress changed to México’s alternative concert attire: a long-sleeved, white GUAYABERA! (This one is very similar to mine).

My guayabera looks like this one.

It was fun to go to the store and buy one, as I have yet to buy myself anything inherently Mexican since I’ve been here. It’s nice to have something to perform in here, and also to wear out to the cantinas.

As I mentioned above, each weekend I’ve been traveling by bus.

We travel in a bus like this

One of the 2 main bus terminals in el D.F.

The first weekend back (for us both) was a scramble to get our affairs in order, organize for the following week(s), and spend a little time together. In my second week here in Xalapa we played a series of concerts around the city called VIVE LA MUSICA, VIVE LA ORQUESTA.

An OSX advert

We performed for anniversaries of a large hospital and 3 city universities. In addition to the performance schedule, I’ve been doing a bit of teaching at the Instituto Superior de Música del Estado de Veracruz (ISMEV or “the institute”). Despite all of that activity, the REAL reason that I haven’t blogged in a while is because at the end of that second week I got really sick. I’m not sure that it was the REVENGE proper, but it took a solid week-to-10-days for me to feel 100%, and the general consensus is that, as a gringo living in México for a month, it was my time to get sick due to the different microorganisms that “reside” here.

Last week I was the guy with the Bert Reynolds 'stache

Next time: Xalapa weeks 3 & 4

Review of México City Phil Concert of Mahler’s Second Symphony

Review of a book about el D.F. by David Lida

And I always miss Mary E while I’m here in Xalapa, and the best is when she comes with me (last time because we were without water for 3 days, joy!)

Mary E relaxing at the hotel

¡Día de Independencia!

September 15th and 16th are very important days here in Mexico! The 16th is Mexico’s independence day and is of course a national holiday, but the party takes place the night before. The biggest celebration is in the center of the city, Centro Histórico, but we decided not to go to that because of soooo many people being there. Instead, we went to Coyoacán, where our friend Rebecca invited us and some of her friends from work to hang out at her place, which is right above the main square in that area and was therefore right in the middle of the action. There were two stages set up for live music and a huge television screen that was showing the party in Centro Histórico.

In order to get into the main area, Jeff and I had to go through a security checkpoint and the woman before was not allowed to pass through because she had an umbrella in her bag. However, I had TWO umbrellas and they let me through anyway! I’m not sure why, but I suspect they assumed I didn’t speak Spanish and it wasn’t worth trying to explain to me that I couldn’t have them! (Reason #1 why it can sometimes be good to be a gringo🙂 Anyway, it was a good thing that I had them because it rained a lot later on in the evening! We spent the first part of the night at Rebecca’s hanging out and as soon as we ventured outside, it started raining! We didn’t make it for long because it was raining hard was pretty chilly so we went back in again. We had planned to go out to the square around midnight, which was when we thought the grito was but it ended being earlier than we thought. The grito is when the president addresses the people from the balcony of the Palacio Nacional on the night of the 15th. It’s not really a speech, but just a few brief words celebrating the country. He then waves a flag and people go crazy. As it turns out, we could hear the grito from Rebecca’s apt. because we were so close to the main square. After it was over, we met some friends of hers at a restaurant and finished out the night there. We got home really late but had a great time!

Though the actual Día de Independencia is a holiday, we saw a lot of people out and about. We decided to go see our first movie here in Mexico and the theatre was really, really busy! We saw No Temas de la Obscuridad or in the U.S., Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a new movie written by Mexican producer/writer/director Guillermo del Toro. It was kind of funny because the commercials before the movie were in Spanish but the previews and the movie itself were in English with Spanish subtitles. Hollywood is still the most popular here. We really liked the movie so if you like somewhat scary movies, we recommend it!

Independence decorations in the main area of Xalapa (Side note: that banner on the church is announcing that the Pope is visiting this week!)

One of the stages in the square of Coyoacán with the big-screen T.V.

More decorations in Coyoacán (note the coyote in the center)

Everything lit up after dark!

And of course, no festivity would be complete without mariachis!

Dessert

I should label this post “Dessert pt. 1” because I’m fairly sure a pt. 2 will eventually come! Dessert is not what you think of when you think of Mexico, right? I mean, we’ve all probably had flan (not my absolute favorite but it’s OK) but at least for me, that’s all I knew about Mexican desserts. Well my friends, they know what they are doing here when it comes to desserts! Fortunately (or unfortunately depending!), we live just around the corner from a heladería (ice cream shop) and Condesa, which is a panadería (bakery). The ice cream at the heladería is wonderful and you really don’t need that much of it because it is super sweet. I’m not exactly sure what they do differently but it tastes much richer than in the U.S. Some of the flavors are similar and others are way different. My favorites so far are mantiquilla de fresa (similar to strawberries and cream) and choco chips (don’t need a translation for that one!). Jeff, being a little more adventurous than me, has tried a couple of flavors that we weren’t even sure what they were after tasting them. One of them definitely involved marshmellows. At any rate, here is a picture from the outside of the store:

This place is also open from fairly early in the morning until about 10:30 at night, making it always easily accessible!

Now for Condesa! The ideal thing to do here is to buy your bread/desserts/tortillas for the day, not in bulk like we often do in the U.S. Each neighborhood has their own tortillaría and their own panadería, so this is very convenient. Since loaf bread is not incredibly common here, the bread that you tend to see in the panadarías are rolls, croissants, and sweet breads. As far as desserts go, they have an incredibly large range including, but not limited to: cakes, pies, muffins, cupcakes, cookies, doughnuts, danish-like pastries, etc., etc. Really, I spend forever in there just trying to decide what I want because everything looks so good! Monday through Friday is a fairly standard spread of choices but on Saturdays and Sundays, they must triple their production because not only do they have tons of everything, but they also have many, many more varieties of everything! It is so much fun to just go in and look! It seems that a lot of people have family dinners over the weekends so they’ll come with their family members after eating and everyone will pick out their own dessert. It’s a neat idea, really and you’re getting everything you buy very fresh. Although these pictures do not convey the true wonder that is Condesa, here are some recent purchases:

Left to right: roll (which we buy to make sandwiches), cookie with a lemon filling, and the most amazing kind of cookie I've ever tasted (see next photo)

I need to join a support group because of this cookie, I am not kidding. It is a strawberry cookie with powdered sugar on top. I'm not a huge cookie person but this is possibly the best thing I've ever tasted!

Left: crossaint; middle: a sweet bread we like; top: some type of sticky bread (that I'm about to eat!); bottom: sweet muffin but with no icing

Outside view of Condesa

Acquisitions

Things have been fairly quiet around here for the last few days, hence the lack of blog posts! I returned to the D.F. from Xalapa on Wednesday and spent the rest of the week doing work and practicing. Jeff returned really late Friday night (actually, Saturday morning!) and we had a nice weekend running errands and hanging out before he left again for Xalapa this afternoon. This week, he will be playing a few concerts of traditional Mexican music. I’ll let him fill you guys in about that later!

While out today, we bought another traditional Mexican item for our apartment, so I thought I’d write about the purchases we’ve made since being here. We haven’t bought too much but are hoping to gradually add to our stash as the year continues. We’ve been here long enough now to have an idea of the kinds of things we want, so when we see what we like at a good price, we usually go ahead and purchase it.

Item 1: These types of crafts are all over markets here and come in all kinds of colors and sizes. Every one I’ve seen has been a depiction of some kind of animal. We chose a coyote, a symbol of the section of the city where I go to school, Coyoacán. The name comes from the Nahuatl (an indigenous people/language) and means “place of coyotes.”

"aaaaoooooooooooooo!"

Item 2: These are also super popular and can be found everywhere. Where as the previous item is made of wood, these are (I think) a type of pottery that is painted and then glazed. Lizards are very popular but there are also cats, frogs, sun/moon designs (soon to come!), and many others that I can’t remember right now. We liked these two guys together so we mounted them on the wall like this.

They do look a bit like they're crawling up the wall...

Item 3: The sun/moon configurations are very popular and are very important in Aztec mythology. The depictions can be found in all colors and sizes. We’ve probably seen more with the sun as the more prominent symbol but we chose one with the moon more prominent.

We particularly liked the colors in this one.

Item 4: In our effort to clean out before leaving Lawrence, we got rid of all of our vases. They weren’t particularly nice just because they were standard ones that you get when someone sends you flowers. So when we arrived here, Jeff began searching for a vase so he could buy me flowers (insert awww!).

Jeff surprised me with this so I don't know exactly where he got it. Maybe he can comment on that...

Item 5: When walking through Parque México today, we came upon a set of tents that were celebrating Oaxacan (Oaxaca is a state in the south of Mexico) culture and selling crafts, jewelry, foods, and clothing. We bought this hanging made of amate paper with designs threaded in. I’m not exactly sure how accurate this website is but it basically states what was explained to us about the process of making this paper from the man we bought ours from: http://home.earthlink.net/~kering/amate.html

We want to frame this eventually but it can be hung by itself like this. Also, it rolls up easily for transportation, a very important characteristic for us!

Item 6: And finally, I bought my first book in Spanish! It’s actually perfect because it’s a collection of interviews with important Mexican composers and musicians. The fact that it is conversational in form makes it much easier to translate than if it were written in textbook language.

Of course "easier to translate" does not actually mean easy...