Music fest opens this weekend with Latin-inspired shows

Why sit at home when the FIU Music Festival can transport you into a completely different world? That’s a question violin graduate student Ian Burgos asks as he talks about the upcoming concert series.

“I’m a musician, so I know I’m biased. I just love live music in general, but we live in a world where it’s just online and all recorded,” he says. “At a live musical experience, you’re tapping into another part of your brain that wouldn’t be activated at home, by yourself.”

Burgos will perform as a member of the FIU Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center at MMC, where the student group will tackle a rousing list of Latin beats.

“We’re going to be playing mambo, lots of Afro Cuban rhythms, even bossas from Brazil,” he says. “That’s just music that will make anybody dance.”

The student orchestra will perform again a week later, on Nov. 2, when they tackle classical works that Burgos says will actually resonate with people who might not think the genre is for them.

“There’s a few classical pieces that everybody knows, and one of them is Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9,” he explains. “I’m sure many people know it in the back of their head. It’s a super-awesome experience that would definitely be fun for everyone.”

Another can’t-miss concert: Habana Sax at 7:30 p.m. on Friday leads off the festival. The five band members, which include a flutist and drummer, have been described by the New York Times as “new music in every sense of the phrase” and “one of the most extraordinary and unique musical groups in the world.” The audience can expect a high-energy show that runs the gamut from African chants and salsa to traditional symphonic compositions and jazz pieces anchored in pounding Latin percussion.

FIU’s artist-in-residence ensemble, the Amernet String Quartet, features two violins, a viola and a cello. While chamber music aficionados already know the acclaimed group, now at FIU for 20 years, violinist Misha Vitenson says those unfamiliar with the genre might be surprised by the “upbeat” first half of the program, which takes place on Nov. 1.

“It’s the most light-hearted thing that I can remember us putting on,” he says. “The first piece is the cello quintet by Luigi Boccherini, and it’s just very tuneful, very easy listening. The piece ends with this movement that is, I would say, very humorous. There’s this certain bouncing element. It’s a technical thing. It’s in the cello. It’s almost like a joke of sorts.”

The second half sees two additional string musicians join on stage, and Vitenson cannot help but make a pitch that everyone come out to hear them. “They are the Taylor Swifts of chamber music,” he says of the highly regarded violist Lawrence Dutton and the cellist Clive Greensmith. Together, the six musicians will play a piece by Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg that Vitensen describes as “absolutely bursting with emotion and the most passionate music one can imagine, almost decadent.”

Even if listening to such works takes folks out of their comfort zone - or, maybe, precisely because it does - people own it to themselves to try it, student violinst Burgos says. He recently performed on campus alongside the Latin Grammy-winner Yandel, who celebrated his newest album release with a standing-room-only performance for FIU students. “It was definitely electric,” he says of the evening, which got lots of press and social media coverage. “On that night, just looking out at everybody, I saw people bouncing around, enjoying, having fun. It was unmatched. It was beautiful.”

The music festival promises more of the same, Burgos adds, and all for a very low ticket price in the comfort of the stunning Wertheim Performing Arts Center. “I would just encourage people to give it a shot and see what happens,” he says. “There’s no better opportunity than now, and at this school, where we have such a great program, to start seeing, feeling and experiencing.”

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