The sensation of enraptured discovery is tangible throughout Gabriela Ortiz’s new album Revolución Diamantina, as one’s mind and body become fully engaged in sounding rituals of the three world premiere recordings involved, given in superlative performances by their commissioners, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. Sharing the stage in these live takes from the Walt Disney Concert Hall, caught on microphones in October 2022 and November 2023, the incredible talents of violinist María Dueñas as well as the soprano and alto voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale provide further layers of amazement into the glistening sonorous feast.
Concealed within the 82-minute digital album, Ortiz’s exquisite violin concerto Altar de Cuerda (String Altar, 2021) makes its spellbinding appearance with its dedicatee as soloist, paired with the mighty title score, the composer’s earth-moving choreographic masterstroke celebrating the empowerment of the Glitter March and Women’s Day protests in Mexico City in 2019 and 2022. Serving as spiritual interlude between the two expansive sonic statements, Ortiz’s life-affirming orchestral tableau Kauyumari (2021) completes the set-list.
Scored for solo violin and an orchestra of duple winds with piccolo, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones – all doubling wine glasses – timpani, three percussion performing a vast array of pitched and unpitched instruments, harp, piano, celesta and strings, the three movements of the ca. 32-minute Altar de Cuerda follow the fast-slow-fast overall formal outline, although the inner workings of each movement display the composer’s highly personal takes on sounding architecture.
The soloist opens the Largo introduction with captivating Sempre libre e molto appassionato figurations over divisi drones on four first violins, her intense musings being shaped by percussive interjections from crotales, triangle, harp, piano, celli and basses. Led by muted trumpets and suspended cymbals, more orchestral instruments enter the game, including birdsong heralds from airy flutes, while the solo violin carries on, unyielded, entering into mesmerizing duet with solo horn.
At around 2’40” the movement breaks into its main Vivo of kinetic Sempre ritmico energico sonics, dancing away in kaleidoscopic manner, pausing to draw breath halfway into its arch, and then permuting on, gazing ever deeper into the multi-faceted ecosystems of Latin American and Mediterranean musical idioms, as suggested by Ortiz’s slang-derived chosen title Morisco chilango, referring to the cultural roots of the soloist and the composer.
Clocking at ca. 14 minutes, the Canto abierto second movement forms the spiritual core of the concerto. Marked Calmo misterioso e molto espressivo, flickering long-held lines and gradual glissandos emerge on tam-tam, timpani, gong, strings and wine glasses, evoking an ambiance of some primordial mystery, enhanced by slow bass drum pulse. The soloist enters at figure A with dolce, delicato lines, decorated by triangle, crotales and vibraphone. As the movement unfolds, musical shapes grow more pronounced in shape and color, while retaining their essentially elusive character.
In the course of the chiaroscuro movement, the solo line hovers mid-air over the ebbing and flowing orchestral currents in dream-like manner, chanting its violinist vespers throughout the open-air altar assemblies wrought of the most magical and, at times, eerie music, out of which the solo horn re-emerges. To complete its trajectory, Canto abierto comes full circle, harking back into in those very textures that began the movement.
The Maya déco finale displays full-on Vivo, leggiero virtuosity – individual and collective – presenting us with colorist cascades melody and rhythm, playing hide and seek at breathtaking intensity, until the soloist breaks away from the maze and enters some hidden square to present her steadfast libero, e molto furioso written-out cadenza. Rejoined after forty measures, the violinist and orchestra bring Altar de Cuerda to its brilliant, triple-forte close.
A terrific performance from Dueñas and the Dudamel-led LA Phil, the album take is awash with top-tier musicality and shared dedication, providing Altar de Cuerda with a reading to cherish. Beautifully engineered, the recording comes with an appealing sense of space and focus, showcasing the seamless technical and spiritual interlocking between the soloist, the conductor and the orchestra. A spot-on combination of colorist finesse and vigorous motion, the Ortiz concerto is awash with intriguing detail and dramatic vividness, to stunning effect.
Premiered at the 2023 California Festival last November, Revolución Diamantina (Glitter Revolution, 2023) for eight amplified voices and orchestra is perhaps the most compelling musical work Ortiz has conceived hitherto. Cast in six acts and subdivided into twenty interconnected scenes, the ca. 42-minute score encapsulates in balletic guise the call for societal reform, as manifested by the shared activism by feminist groups and female police officers in Mexico City, starting with the August 2019 Glitter March, where protestors threw pink glitter at the Chief of Police in order to denounce the lack of response and impunity that ensued following the rape of a woman by local officers, and carrying on to the unprecedented event of police officers and protestors coming together in joint call for justice on International Women’s Day in March 2022.
According to the composer’s note, the six acts of Revolución Diamantina, based on poetic dramaturgy by Christina Rivera Garza, “traverse various scenarios related to feminism: harassment and lack of security in public spaces, the confusion between the language of romantic love and the practices of manipulation and troll that all too often can lead to lethal forms of violence against women; solitude and a lack of sense of belonging: the voices of the disappeared; a blind march that makes its appearance on the horizon of a nonsensical place; the intimate terrorism that goes on between couples, as well as its stages and consequences; street protests and their cries for justice; and finally, the aspiration that only by walking together we will be able to find a way out, because even though we may have only indirectly experienced much of what have been described here, their cause is also our own: that of all of us, women and men and people.”
Looking at the music, Ortiz’s score, which lends itself marvelously to both concertante and album treatments alike, calls for a large orchestra of triple winds, with alto saxophone, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, timpani, a vast percussion section involving no less than five players, harp, piano, celesta and strings as well as an amplified chorus of four sopranos and four altos, whose expressive range encompasses various branches of virtuosity from whispers and coos to passages quasi-instrumental scat, blending with the instruments here and evoking gorgeous choral tapestries there. Brought to dazzling sonorous raiment by sopranos Kelci Hahn, Chloé Vaught, Holly Sedillos and Graycen Gardner and altos Callista Hoffman-Campbell, Sharmila G. Lash, Sarah Lynch and Lindsay Patterson Abdou, the vocal parts in Revolución Diamantina are nothing short of phenomenal, matching the orchestral feast in equal measure.
The LA Phil timpani, percussion, keyboards and harp are kept busy from start to finish, and by God, they deliver an astonishing performance, alongside top-tier contributions from strings, winds and brass, all bound together by Dudamel’s ever-vigorous, keenly paced conducting.
The sounds that cats make opening act is introduced by metallic percussion: molto cantabile glockenspiel solo, accompanied by gongs, metal pipes crotales and vibraphone, soon joined by harp, piano, celesta, woodwinds and violins. Rhythmic profiles start to gain shape and prominence, and the music adopts cat-like motion of sprints and stops, as the orchestra keeps pausing to look back. Voices enter, their groovy whispers gradually into cat-calls, as the music builds up to a pulsating chase scene for singers and instrumentalists, recalling an agitated version of Music for 18 Musicians. The scene grows wild and howling, its hectic high-point being followed by elusive fade-out.
The second act, We don’t love each other, adopts more meditative Lontano el molto delicato tone. Here, the voices and orchestra merge into intricate textures of harmony and color, recalling those of György Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds (1973), perhaps, while low reeds and brass provide sonorities not far removed from some of the most evocative lines in more recent John Williams scores. Yet, the music is ever quintessentially original, to utmost striking effect.
Ominous percussion, coupled with air sound winds and brass over a double bass drone, set the mood for Borders and bodies third act. Sighing voices enter in whispery manner, and rhythmic figurations again come into being. Scene cuts to propulsive ostinato patterns on piano, low reeds, celli and basses, initiating a huge Sempre ritmico e molto acentuato build-up – or the Blind March – engaging the entire orchestra. The voices return to close the act, together with percussion, piano and basses, joined by airy clarinet and flutes.
Speaking the unspeakable opens in quasi-minimalist manner, with ostinato patterns layered upon one another in the course of gradual additive process. Voices enter, with intensifying accentuations, and the unrest starts to grow within the music. The material becomes more fragmented, violent even, mounting to thunderous virtuosity worthy of Danse sacrale.
Tides turn in Pink Glitter fifth act. Lento, intimo misterioso vibraphone, keyboards and harp set the mood, subtly colored by ppp glissando voices, winds and violins. Out of the quiet opening, open-air music of broad sonorities and tremendous kinetic potential emerges, as the scenery evolves into empowered Protest, slogans and samba of full-throttled choral and orchestra tour-de-force of special magnificence.
To close Revolución Diamantina, Ortiz devises a resplendently Ravelian colorist pastoral in the cathartic Todas sixth act. Opening with a ravishing Dolce, religioso, espressivo meditation, followed by a sounding daybreak for voices and orchestra, and rounding off with a whispering endcap, music gazes both back and forward, contemplating upon the events transpired and things to come.
A substantial album first, Revolución Diamantina marks the most recent milestone chapter to be added to the recorded legacy of the LA Phil, the LA Master Chorale and Dudamel. Coming in the heels of their recent album take on Thomas Adès’s Dante (2019-20) – another contemporary choreographic masterpiece – the revolutionary sonorities of the Ortiz recording bear both instant appeal and lasting impact. The audio crew and engineering team provide further praiseworthy contribution, embracing sonority and clarity with equal care and commitment.
Appearing between the two main pieces, seven minutes of pure aural joy is unleashed in the guise of Ortiz’s Kauyumari, an orchestral score written as musical reflection of the return to the stage following the pandemic. According to the composer’s note, the title comes from the Huichol people of Mexico, among whom Kauyumari or the Blue Deer represents a spiritual guide, one that is transformed through an extended pilgrimage into a hallucinogenic cactus called peyote.
Scored for duple winds with piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet and contrabassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings, Kauyumari builds upon a Huichol melody Ortiz first adopted into her music in the closing movement of Altar de Muertos (1997) for the Kronos Quartet. Percussion and two offstage trumpets set the music in motion, answered by their onstage colleagues, and harmonized by low-string pedal-points. The full orchestra is soon engaged in swift sunrise and groovy midday music, recalling that of Claude Debussy’s Iberia (1905-08), at least distantly. Orchestral festivity par excellence, Kauyumari is given a joyous workout from the LA Phil and Dudamel.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
María Dueñas, violin
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grand Gershon, artistic director
Jenny Wong, associate artistic director
Gabriela Ortiz: Altar de Cuerda (2021) for violin and orchestra
Gabrieal Ortiz: Kauyumari (2021) for orchestra
Gabriela Ortiz: Revolución Diamantina (2023) for eight voices and orchestra
Recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA 6-9 October 2022 (Altar de Cuerda), 13-16 October 2022 (Kauyumari) and 16-19 November 2023 (Revolución Diamantina)
Platoon LAPHIL02 (2024), hi-res download
© Jari Kallio
AIM - Adventures in Music 
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