Pinching myself in Philo: Bueno Yabbelow concert at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (Anderson Valley Advertiser)

Greg Krouse, contributing writer, Anderson Valley Advertiser

Gabriela Lena Frank’s Bueno Yabbelow Music Series concert at the Anderson Valley Grange #669 (Sept 19th, 2017) was pretty impressive. Joshua Roman, Cellist and Johnny Gandelsman, Violinist, are world class performers. Gabriela named her series carefully including our mixed culture with the notion of a conversation. Yabbelow (Boontling) means ‘active excited chatter’ with bueno (Spanish) meaning good active chatter. Gabriela school, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, has many objectives: to find seed ideas, realize these with evolving skills of music notation, develop community within musicians, and exchange with musicians to a yet larger community. This Bueno Yabbelow introduces the fruit of a year’s newly-created pieces. Unlike a traditional recital, where most music is solely interpreted by listeners, we were provided a kernel of the seed thoughts from the composers themselves. The first piece on the concert (Zapatos de Chincha, or "shoes from Chincha," a coastal Peruvian town) was composed by Gabriela. A provocative piece, with lots of breath and sweeping sounds from both instruments.

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