Insite

12/12 (2000)

By Café Tacuba 

Arranged by Osvaldo Golijov (b.1960) 

Recorded performance by Alejandro Flores and Café Tacuba 

December 12 is celebrated throughout Mexico as the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the country’s patron saint. In 1531, just a decade after the Spanish Conquest, the Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous Mexican named Juan Diego on the hill of Tepayac, outside Mexico City. Associated with her appearance was a series of miracles, including the sudden curing of a dying man, unnaturally fragrant flowers that appeared to be painted but then became real, and finally the imprint on Juan Diego’s cloak of the Virgin Mary. This piece, written by Café Tacuba in collaboration with composer Osvaldo Golijov, was conceived as a collection of different moments and environments experienced during the course of the Day of the Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

The five-part sonic portrait of contemporary Mexico weaves together not only the sounds of a rock band and a string quartet, but also traditional Mexican instruments and street sounds. The scenes range from the mariachi bands of Plaza Garibaldi, to the loud whistle from the cart of a camote (yam) vendor, to the amazing Voladores de Papantla, a Veracruz ritual where four men, accompanied by flutes and drums, leap from a pole while attached to ropes that slowly unwind. The piece ends with the fire works and bells of Mexico City’s Zócalo on Independence Day. 

Café Tacuba was formed in 1989 outside of Mexico City by design students Rubén Albarrán and Joselo Rangel (guitar), his brother Enrique (bass), and friend Emmanuel del Real (keyboards). Signed by Warner Music, the band released its self-titled debut album in 1992, an upbeat, genre-skipping mélange of spirited Beatles-esque rock, traditional norteños and mariachi, hip hop, ska, and epic Latin pop. Café Tacuba went on to solidify their standing at the forefront of the rock en español scene with the follow-up album Re in 1994. The band’s release Reves/Yosoyreceived a 1999 Latin Grammy Award for Best Rock Album of the Year. After taking several years off, Café Tacuba regrouped to produce the electronically driven Cuatro Caminos (2003) and a live album, Un Viaje (2005). 

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. He was raised surrounded by Western classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. He moved to Israel in 1983, where he studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy and immersed himself in the colliding musical traditions of that city. On moving to the United States in 1986, Golijov earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb, and was a fellow at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen in the early 1990s. Golijov became personally acquainted with the Kronos Quartet at Tanglewood, and has since collaborated with the group on about thirty works. 

Golijov is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. The recording of Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos, on Hänssler Classic, received Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2002. Also in 2002, EMI released Yiddishbbuk, a Grammy-nominated CD of Golijov’s chamber music, recorded by the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Kronos’ recording of Golijov’s “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” was released in 1997 on Nonesuch Records, with clarinetist David Krakauer. 

Café Tacuba’s “12/12″ appears on Kronos’ Nonesuch recording, Nuevo. 

Note by Sidney Chen (courtesy of the Kronos Quartet). 

Twilight in Turkey (1938/arr. 1994) 

By Raymond Scott (1908–1994) 

Arranged by Randall Woolf 

Born as Henry Warnow in Brooklyn on September 10, 1908, Raymond Scott adopted his name from a Manhattan telephone book, explaining that “It was a nice sounding name. It had good rhythm.” 

In 1931 Scott graduated from the Institute of Musical Art (later known as the Juilliard School). A classically trained jazz-based pop visionary who sought to portray the modern world in musical vignette, Scott had his start with the Saturday Night Swing Session from New York, where he worked with Bunny Berigan’s first band, the staff band of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Johny Williams, Dave Wade, and Dave Harris. 

From his beginnings with swing bands and in addition to his work as a recording engineer, electronic music pioneer, and inventor, Scott would go on to assemble the first racially integrated radio network orchestra (for CBS in 1942); score Hollywood films, Broadway shows, and television dramas; write commercial jingles; and compose music for “serious” concerts and ballet. For the five years prior to his retirement in 1977, Scott headed Motown’s electronic music division. 

Though never writing specifically for cartoons, Scott’s music is perhaps best known through his many tunes adapted by Carl Stalling and others for Warner Brothers. These tunes were perfectly suited to accompany animation, owing to a combination of playful melodies, cat-chase-mouse rhythms, and springboard syncopation, which can be heard underscoring the antics of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tweety and Sylvester, the Road Runner, and others. More recently, Scott’s music has been quoted by Devo, They Might Be Giants, and Jim Thirwell of Foetus and has been used to underscore the Ren and Stimpy cartoons. 

Randall Woolf studied composition privately with David Del Tredici and Joseph Maneri and at Harvard, where he earned a Ph.D. He is a member of the Common Sense Composers Collective. He is composer-in-residence for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and also will be in residence with the String Orchestra of New York City, sponsored by Meet the Composer. 

In 1997 he composed a new ballet of Where the Wild Things Are, in collaboration with Maurice Sendak and Septime Webre. In 2003, he composed “Women at an Exhibition,” for orchestra and electronics, for the Akron Art Museum and Symphony, with a video by Mary Harron (director of American Psycho) and John C. Walsh. “Women at an Exhibition” was performed by the American Composer’s Orchestra in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. He is writing a new work with video by Harron and Walsh and pieces for Jennifer Choi, Present Music, Tales and Scales, Relâche, and Third Angle. Woolf works frequently with writer and director Valeria Vasilevski. 

His works have been performed by Kathleen Supové, Todd Reynolds, Ethel, conductor Ransom Wilson, Fulcrum Point, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, Paul Dresher Ensemble, Bang on a Can/SPIT Orchestra, California EAR Unit, and others. He has also arranged music for John Cale, including his score “American Psycho,” based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. The CD of his ballet of Where the Wild Things Areis available on cdbaby.com, as is his album Modern Primitive, performed by Ransom Wilson,The Pack, Todd Reynolds, and others. 

Note courtesy of the Kronos Quartet.