Born on the island of Cuba in 1948, Paquito D'Rivera began his career as a child prodigy, playing both the clarinet and the saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra. Since his defection from Cuba, Paquito D'Rivera has taken command of his role as a cross-cultural ambassador, creating and promoting a multinational style that moves from Bebop to Latin to Mozart. Throughout his career in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, D'Rivera's works have received rave reviews from the critics. D'Rivera has received many awards, including six Grammys, and his discography includes over 30 solo albums in jazz, bebop, Latin music, and classical music.

In his quest to bring the Latin repertoire into the forefront of the classical arena, Paquito has successfully created, championed, and promoted all types of classical compositions. In addition to his extraordinary performing career as an instrumentalist, Paquito D'Rivera has rapidly gained a reputation as an accomplished composer. His works often reveals his versatility and widespread influences, which range from Afro-Cuban to the dance hall, to influences encountered in his many travels, and back to his classical origins.

In "Wapango," D'Rivera turns to the lively spirit and the rich rhythm of the Mexican couple dance called huapango, imaginatively balancing the fundamental relationship between the traditional and the new. His "Danzón" is based on the Cuban danzón, which evolved in the 1870s from the contradanza, becoming a distinctive creole blend of African rhythms with melodic elements drawn from the European country-dance. The rubato introduction of "Danzón" sets a romantic atmosphere followed by the danzón proper in clave, the rhythmic foundation of almost all Cuban music. Finally, the "Vals Venezolano" honors Antonio Lauro, Venezuela's most famous composer, in a lively, syncopated waltz.

Isaac Albéniz is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most famous Spanish composers of the late 19th century. Though a Catalonian by birth and a composer primarily for solo piano, many of his works imitate guitar playing and the flamenco song and dance forms of southern Spain’s region of Andalucía.

From 1905 to 1908 Albéniz wrote his masterpiece, Iberia, a collection of 12 impressions published in four books for piano solo, evocative of the sounds and rhythms of his Spain though in a style notably influenced by the impressionistic colors and sounds of the French composers. The beautiful Almería is from the second book and emphasizes color, revealing a greater density of texture in contrast to his earlier piano works. It is an evocation of the Anadalucía of the past.

The lively Aragón was first published in 1889 in Paris as the first piece of Dos danzas españolas. However, it is much probably more famous as a part of his popular Suite española. His most extended piano work before Iberia, it is a fantasy based on the jota aragonesa of Aragón that features an authentic popular theme, which is rare in his music.

Guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1954, is one of the most important current voices in jazz. He has redefined the sound and role of the guitar in jazz and as a composer has created beautiful and lush music taking inspiration from Brazilian rhythms and at others times from elements as “American” as the midwestern landscape.

45/8 (1988) from his album Letter from Home is a composition based upon a rhythmic template of 45 eighth notes before a strong downbeat that begins a simple 8-bar phrase written by co-composer and keyboardist Lyle Mays. This performance features a charango, a small, ten-stringed musical instrument made from the shell of an armadillo. The charango is typical in Andean music and other folk music of South America.

In Her Family (1986) from the album Still Life (Talking) was written on the last day of summer vacation in upstate New York and is a precursor to other piano-based ballads played with soprano guitar doubling the high register of the piano.

Better Days Ahead (1979) also from his album Letter from Home was written on tour with the Pat Metheny Group in Fulton, Missouri. Originally entitled Fulton, it stayed in the Pat Metheny Group’s play list for around ten years without ever being recorded. It evokes a bebop harmonic vocabulary with a guitar-based rhythmic accompaniment related to the Brazilian bossa nova.

Carlos Guastavino, born in Santa Fe, Argentina, was one of the foremost Argentine classical composers of the 20th century. His production totals more than 200 works, most of it dedicated to the piano and to the voice. Included in his opus are three sonatas for solo guitar. An accomplished pianist with an intense gift for melody, Guastavino always wrote effectively for the piano, mastering not only its brilliant and virtuoso aspect, but also the intimate and poetic side of this instrument. His style, always tonal and lusciously romantic, is fully based on Argentine folk music.

His distillation of local folk elements into an avowedly romantic-nationalist idiom is natural, and the popular spirit of the original folk melodies and rhythms always remains untouched and fresh, even at moments of complex rhythmic, harmonic, or contrapuntal elaboration.

These Two Romances, Muchacho jujeño and Baile, come from Tres romances written for two pianos in 1948 and published in 1951. Muchacho jujeño [Boy from Jujuy] is in the rhythmic form of a bailecito, while the Baile [Dance] is based on a folk dance named “gato.”

Tango was the rage of Europe and America soon after World War I and was undistinguishable from the popular dance of the same name. This aggressive yet passionate tango, begotten in the brothels of turn-of-the-century Argentina and raised in the dance halls of Paris, became a quick, easy victim of parody. Tango became passé. In the mid-1950's, however, Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) began revolutionizing the tango. He created the Nuevo Tango by adding elements of dissonance, chromaticism, rhythmic complexity, and jazz. Piazzolla received death threats from Argentinean "nationalists" and tango purists in response to his radical treatment of the tango. Only recently has his music become accepted, both in Argentina and also in concert halls throughout much of the world.

Piazzolla began writing Las cuatro estaciones porteñas [The Four Porteño Seasons or Four Buenos Aires Seasons] in 1965 and finished the suite in 1970. Originally written for his quintet of violin, bandoneón, electric guitar, piano, and contrabass, Las cuatro estaciones porteñas has become one of his best-known works. Piazzolla pays homage to the tango of Buenos Aires as well as the "serious" music of the great Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldian traces are most obvious in the closing bars of "Invierno porteño," and a fugue-like section begins "Primavera porteña." With a breath of Nuevo Tango, Piazzolla gives new life to traditional classical forms.


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