Camerata Romeu, betting on the Grammys alongside Yalil Guerra

August 11, 2020

La Camerata Romeu, a women's orchestra directed by Maestro Zenaida Romeu, appears on the list of recordings competing this year for the Latin Grammy, for the contemporary classical work Al Partir, included on the album Renacimiento, by composer, producer and guitarist Yalil Guerra, also included among the selections vying for the Best Classical Music Album position.

The piece, inserted in the album that the record label RYCY Productions released last May through the Internet, resonates because of the theme and the formal resources achieved based on the homonymous poem by Cuban poetess Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873), considered one of the fundamental female voices of Cuban literature of the 19th century.

"Both the uncertainty, and the solitude, the uprootedness or the great pain of forced emigration, are described brilliantly and all the musical spaces are resolved to offer that emotion to the public," considered the director of the group, while describing the conjunction achieved by the composer as "very accurate."

For Romeu, Al partir "should be considered as a very singular work within the repertoire of Latin American music because it is, furthermore, a timeless and universal theme." The sonnet was written by the poetess, also known as La Tula, in 1836, when she had to move with her family to Spain, where she lived separated from her country until she returned in 1859, as the wife of Colonel Domingo Verdugo y Massieu, Deputy to the Cortes.

The director of the Camerata praised the compositional resources employed by Yalil Guerra, "for the effectiveness of all of them put in function of dramaturgy." The recording of the piece was achieved in June 2019 during its world premiere in the concert hall of the old Minor Basilica of the Convent of San Francisco de Asís in the historic center of Havana, home of the Camerata Romeu, which years before had released Clave para cuerdas y percusión by the same composer.

As it became known, other interpretations under consideration for the voting members in which the Camerata Romeu participates are in the instrumental category Ricardo Herz&Camerata Romeu Nova Música Brasileira para Cordas; Mourinho, in the best music video category and Nova Música Brasileira para Cordas, in the Best Album of the Year category.

According to statements by Yalil Guerra, the title of the album Renacimiento "has a lot to do with the moment we are living in this year, a tremendous pandemic worldwide, because of which all the arts have been practically paralyzed, all of society has been immobilized due to this very serious disease that is ending the entire world."

Renacimiento, the musician added, "is a reflection about us, about myself, it is something that makes me think about a rebirth, what will happen tomorrow when everything is over, when no traces of this evil remain, and we, what are we going to do as human beings to improve ourselves, at a social level, as a human country…what are we going to do, if we are going to continue as before or if we are going to modify our behavior and way of seeing life."

Among the characteristics of this discographic material is the fact that it includes several works from Guerra's chamber music repertoire, divided into three sections, the first three are for wind instruments; the central one is for solo instruments; and the last one for strings, one for solo violin and two for string orchestra.

On the other hand, he said, "another distinctive feature is that the sonority it offers at the beginning is quite peculiar, which breaks with the schemes of what I have been doing previously, so it is not similar to the beginning of any other album that I may have made in the past."

According to him, "the two works that have more musicians, more orchestrations, the largest, were reserved for the end of the album, Afrodita, the Symphony No. 2 for strings Los dioses del Olimpo, and Al partir, which I dedicated to La Avellaneda, inspired by her poem of the same title."

Guerra has stated that Cuban music is so present in this album "that it is unavoidable to frame it within the sonority of contemporary classical Cuban music. References to son, trova, bolero, Afro-Cuban music and the song of the island, give perceptible colors and nuances of our most popular tradition in some melodies and rhythms that are woven into the pieces."