A Spanish Affair
Friday, January 31, 2025
7:30PM
CLE Concierto presents a program of passionate and vibrant music by Spanish baroque composers this winter, featuring Guillermo Salas-Suarez (baroque violin), Qin Ying Tan (harpsichord), and Brian Kay (baroque guitar). The trio will perform a spicy Fandango by Felix Lopez, Jose Herrando's El Jardín de Aranjuez, which evokes the gardens of Madrid with its bird calls and vivid musical imagery, and Luigi Boccherini's rarely heard but brilliant harpsichord and violin sonatas.
Variaciones del fandango español Félix Máximo López
Harpsichord Sonata in G major Marianne Martinez
Sonata El jardín de Aranjuez José Herrando
Sonata in G minor G 29 op 5 no 5 Luigi Boccherini
Folia Variations Pedro Lopes Nogueira
Canarios Gaspar Sanz, arr. Brian Kay
Program
Artists
Guillermo Salas-Suárez, Baroque Violin
Costa Rican Baroque violinist and scholar Guillermo Salas-Suárez has served as guest concertmaster for Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, American Baroque Opera, Lumedia Musicworks and Bourbon Baroque, among others. Guillermo holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Historical Performance from Case Western Reserve University, where he studied with Dr. Julie Andrijeski. He has also performed with the Lyra, Atlanta, North Carolina, and Austin Baroque Orchestras, Apollo’s Fire, The Newberry Consort, Bach Collegium Fort Wayne, The Early Interval, and Wit’s Folly, a clarinet and strings chamber ensemble he co-founded. Guillermo has collaborated and trained with Barthold Kuijken, Malcolm Bilson, Paolo Pandolfo, Jaap ten Linden, Enrico Gatti, Monica Huggett, Shunske Sato, Bruce Dickey, Peter Sellers, and the late Jeanne Lamon at the early music festivals in Boston, Amherst, Bloomington, Urbino (Italy), Daroca (Spain), Saintes (France), Stuttgart Bachwoche (Germany), etc. He has also appeared at the Aspen Music Festival, Severance Hall, Sala São Paulo (Brazil), and the National Theatres of Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras. As a scholar of 18th-century music in Spain and Mexico, he has presented his research at Boston, Indiana, and Oregon Universities, and is currently writing an academic book for IU Press. As an educator, Guillermo is committed to the advancement of historical performance in Latin America, having served on the faculty at the Festival de Musica de Santa Catarina (Brazil) and conducted workshops at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Academia de Música Antigua de Medellín (Colombia), as well as the premier universities of his home country. He is a member of Early Music America’s IDEA Task Force, a cohort dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in early music throughout the continent. For the 24-25 season, Guillermo is excited to embark on a Latin American tour of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and recitals with harpsichordists QinYing Tan and Byron Schenkman.
QinYing Tan, Harpsichord
Lauded by Cleveland Classical as "an excellent soloist, a compelling performer who is equally comfortable handling long strings of notes... and singing through emotive melodies with her instrument,” Dr. Qin Ying Tan currently serves as harpsichord faculty at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music. Dr. Tan has appeared in concerts in Singapore, Shanghai, Germany, France, and has performed extensively across the United States of America. This season sees engagements with Hudson Historical Society and Library, City Music, the Historically-Informed Performance Practice Department at Case Western Reserve University, and the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival. In addition to her commitment to early repertoire, Tan regularly presents new music to her audiences and has premiered several pieces, most notably Cenk Ergun's sound installation piece, "Fomare" at the Cleveland Museum of Art and “Are You You” by Michi Wiancko with City Music. As a pedagogue, Dr. Tan’s students have successfully gained admission into graduate programs in Michigan and Boston. Dr. Tan continues to cultivate an interest of historically-informed performance at the pre-college and college level in her role as a board member of the Northeast Ohio MTNA and harpsichord faculty at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. Her passion for sharing historical music has also led her to lead dynamic workshops on baroque dance and historical keyboards in Southeast Asia where accessibility to period music is rare. When not at work, Ying loves exploring and hiking around beautiful Cleveland with her family. She welcomes conversations about culture, history or how music can be a vehicle for social change and a tool to bring communities together.
Brian Kay, historical plucked strings and percussion
Brian Kay is a modern-day troubadour. He is the Artistic Director of the early music meets early theater group THEATRO, and is currently overseeing their international recording of music from the plays of William Shakespeare. He won a GRAMMY® Award for his work on Apollo's Fire's Songs of Orpheus recording with tenor Karim Sulayman. He works as a musician and recording artist for the Netflix music lab and is a featured soloist on the soundtrack of their original series The Witcher. He has performed throughout the world at venues such as the National Concert Hall of Dublin, Belfast Castle (Ireland), Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Folger Theater. His live radio appearances include NPR, Baltimore's WYPR, Baltimore's 98ROCK, Boston's WGBH, and Cleveland's WCLV. He has recorded with labels Avie and Sono Luminus and has appeared on releases which include original, early music, folk, traditional sephardic, chamber and orchestral. He is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, arranger, and a traditional and historical music specialist. Brian is a founding member of THEATRO and Twa Corbies, and regularly performs with Hesperus, The Folger Consort, Early Music Access Project, and Trio Sefardi. Brian is on the faculty as teacher of historical plucked instruments at Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University. He has lectured on music and history at Yale University, The Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University, The Folger Theater, The Kennedy Center, and Baldwin-Wallace College. He was Artist in Residence at the Cushman School in Miami and has done outreach for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, and prisons across the country.