University Musical Dissemination. A Perspective

One of the pillars of UNAM’s cultural dissemination and the Head Office in charge of this task is its Philharmonic Orchestra, OFUNAM. Founded in 1936, shortly after the university achieved autonomy, it presents more than 30 different programs in three seasons each year. Its main venue, the Nezahualcóyotl Hall, is a source of university pride as well as of acoustic pleasure. For those who cannot attend this emblematic building of the University Cultural Center, there has long been the option of Radio UNAM, which broadcasts Sunday’s concerts. An alternative for the same concert, more recent but with a large number of followers, is TV UNAM. In both cases, we have traditional broadcasts, but there are also Internet streaming transmissions. In addition, a direct broadcast is carried out by Música UNAM, the office in charge of the OFUNAM, on special occasions for Saturday’s concerts. From time to time, the orchestra visits other university sites, both on and off campus.

PANDEMIC AND RESTRUCTURING
Well, from March 2020 to October 2021, OFUNAM, like the entire planet, was forced to stop its activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Together with the other areas of Música UNAM, the university’s emblematic orchestra had to reinvent itself to contribute, week after week, with an attractive university musical offer in Internet, which even at a distance would allow us to keep in touch with an audience locked up at home and offer them a space for musical solace amid the anxiety of forced confinement and generalized uncertainty.

We drew on the archives, of course, of both the OFUNAM and the University Youth Orchestra Eduardo Mata (OJUEM, Spanish initials) to offer selections from previously performed symphonic concerts. But it didn’t take long for us to elaborate a set of specifications so that cell phone recordings would meet specific technical requirements. The result was the broadcasting of solo pieces, personal testimonies sprinkled with music, and also trivia, in which we invited the public to act as Shazam (the app that recognizes music) and guess the work from an excerpt played by one of our musicians. Like many others, we recorded those famous videos made of little squares: an abbreviated Sinfonía India performed by the OJUEM, a Christmas piece with the OFUNAM. We also offered a continuous series about ancient music, courtesy of the members of UNAM’s Ancient Music Academy (AMA). As soon as sanitary conditions made it possible, we gathered a handful of musicians in the studio and recorded small ensembles. Today, tests for COVID are normal, and face masks have become everyday items, but let’s remember that in those dark months of 2020, before the arrival of vaccines, being cautious (or not) could mean the difference between staying healthy or falling victim to the frightening virus and risking your life. We also commissioned artists outside Música UNAM, both local and foreign, with recordings that resulted in the projects Laboratorios sonoros (Sound Labs) and Trasfrontera (Crossing Borders), among others. Once we assumed dissemination through Internet, we realized that the audience consisted not only of people from the city or even the country but also from other parts of the continent and the planet.

In August 2021, when we could glimpse the return to the forums (which would happen in October), it was finally time to land the ideas planned for Música UNAM at the beginning of the administration. We had been able to explore the lines of work agreed upon with the Cultural Dissemination Head Office through the activities undertaken remotely during the pandemic. Now it was time to implement the approaches with the artistic groups in their regular face-to-face practice, as far as circumstances would allow, since, let us remember, the return to the famous “new normal” was gradual and, at times, hectic.

A UNIVERSITY ORCHESTRA
An orchestra is the expression of an artistic and social project; it entails a conjunction of intentions in pursuit of musical goals, of course, but it also carries a whole series of cultural, social, and political values. The symphony or philharmonic orchestra is also, needless to say, one of the most sophisticated musical instruments the West has ever created. Throughout its history, it has been the repository of a vast legacy of works written in different periods and countries. It can transport us back centuries to the Baroque or offer us absolutely updated creations of our times. Surprisingly versatile, capable of uttering evanescent whispers or unleashing thunderous storms, an orchestra reflects the society it belongs to and maintains a constant dialogue, even if the terms differ depending on the orchestra in question.

But this is a very optimistic and simplistic perspective, someone may respond. The orchestra is a product of another time, it is disconnected from the most urgent cultural quests of our days, and its economic model is unsustainable. It attracts fewer and fewer audiences and fails to renew them; it focuses instead on an ever-decreasing social response. It only survives at the expense of our taxes or a few patrons, and its very nature insists on a Manichean vision of culture: the opposition between high and low culture that validates the former at the expense of the latter. It entails the defense of an elitist cultural capital, and, as if that were not enough, it is yet another symbol of the mechanisms of patriarchy despite its timid attempts to reverse this state of affairs.

This old discussion was recently enriched with current and relevant critical perspectives. It is worth taking the above points seriously and weighing their merit, which is not the same as advocating the orchestra’s demise. Despite the proclamations of anachronism that have been made for decades (also aimed at classical music in general), the orchestra survives. An orchestral concert is still something unique, an aspiration to a perhaps unattainable ideal: reaching it or getting as close as possible to it depends in part on the complexity of the artistic work required, but it also depends on several factors, on a whole series of cultural, social and economic conditioning factors. Although it may seem somewhat chimerical, this aspiration still results in valuable, unique contributions. The orchestra possesses a rich catalog of music that has been both a reflection of the historical moment in which it was composed, and, on many occasions, the vehicle chosen to transform that moment. In summary, a good concert still awakens awareness and sensitivity. And with that aspiration in mind, many leading voices in contemporary music creation continue to devote their best efforts to it. A modern-day orchestra can and must embrace not only its history but also the challenges embodied in these critical positions if it is to remain relevant. And the university orchestra is uniquely positioned to take on this task.

In most parts of the world, university orchestras tend to be student ensembles with varying degrees of musical training (many do not intend to pursue music as a career but rather adopt it as a complementary activity). This does not imply a lack of merit in their work; there are several examples of student orchestras of excellent level and successful proposals. Mexico is one of the few countries with professional university orchestras that not only have their own history, infrastructure, formal labor scheme, and assigned budget but also form part of the broader program of cultural dissemination that a higher education institution deploys.

Universities are spaces for disseminating and deepening knowledge in all its expressions. They are nourished by different and sometimes conflicting points of view, and a university only fulfills its mission to the extent that it is plural and inclusive, willing to incorporate varied perspectives and provide sufficient space for them to be expressed, developed, and contrasted. This responsibility is even greater if we are talking about a public and national university like ours, which has and maintains a national and international leadership position year after year.

A University Orchestra, committed to its time and environment, must not, therefore, be limited to be like a museum of antiquities, no matter how expressive or valued these may be (I will return to the museum analogy below), but it must dialogue with the quests and problems of the society it belongs to. Otherwise, it will cease to be relevant and will condemn itself to an increasingly isolated and nostalgic exercise, thus fulfilling the critical predictions mentioned above. 

Throughout the four years I was in charge of Música UNAM, and explicitly and decisively after the end of the pandemic, we sought to ensure that the programming of the OFUNAM (and other areas of the institution) would establish a balance between the consecrated works of the classical repertoire (18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries, with a clear European and male bias) and four programmatic lines of absolute relevance for the dissemination of contemporary music led by a Mexican university orchestra:

1. Increasing inclusion of women composers, conductors and soloists.
2. Inclusion of works written during the 20^th century that represent milestones in musical development but are not usually part of the orchestral repertoire in Mexico.
3. Inclusion of Mexican works, both those that are part of the local canon and those relevant works that were overlooked, as well as those that are being written today.
4. Inclusion of works written in other countries in recent times to offer a view into current musical creation.

For practical purposes, I summarize these four lines as Women, 20^th Century, Mexico, and Today’s International Production.

Occasionally, the fields cross, as when a work by a foreign contemporary woman composer is included (1 and 4). Of course, these lines have been present before in the OFUNAM’s programs, but I felt it was necessary to put emphasis on their adoption, with full conviction of their importance, so that they would contribute to outlining the OFUNAM’s fundamental mission: to be an orchestra with a varied and inclusive program, proud and attentive to the past but open to the expressions of our time, capable of dialoguing with its audience and constantly renewing it; and, thus, the standard bearer of the mission of university cultural dissemination.

OPENING THE MUSEUM
Unlike orchestras in the United States, for example, which depend to a large extent on private contributions and, therefore, often opt for conventional programming out of fear of provoking rejection from the audience and sponsors, the OFUNAM has an assigned budget that frees it to a certain extent from the demands of the market and allows it to assume its programming from another economic model. If universities daily assume the exploration of innovative areas of knowledge as part of their mission and as a way of giving back to the society in which they operate (a look at UNAM’s research institutes shows one case after another), a university orchestra, with its particularities, should not stay behind.

This is not to say that everything an orchestra plays should focus on the new. Far from it. As with a museum or a library, the importance of the past is not in dispute. If we evoke once again our university context, the knowledge and weighting of the canon is often the starting point of middle and higher education. Back to the museum analogy (a problematic comparison because music does not exist until played and is therefore in continuous fluctuation, even if recorded), we would have to opt for a museum with varied, multiple, and diverse vocations, which continuously evaluates itself. It would have rooms dedicated to the art of the past and temporary exhibitions showing samples of what is being done in our time. It would also be desirable to have laboratories or black boxes conceived to foster experimentation and sound and conceptual research: research spaces based on restlessness and emphasizing the process rather than the final result, sometimes unknown (especially when it comes to new work). It would be a museum of perhaps inconceivable variety if we think of it in the light of those existing today. But of necessary aspiration, even if it sometimes falls short due to the vastness of the assignment.

SEASONS AFTER THE PANDEMIC
The implementation of these programmatic lines became apparent when the OFUNAM resumed regular activities in the fall of 2021, after the pandemic hiatus. In addition to the decision to focus on the classical period (a lot of Mozart and Hadyn), which seemed a good way to resume orchestral discipline after an 18 month break, the season included works by four 20^th century classics (Copland, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinski), along with a piece by Mexican composer Ana Lara, a chamber version of Mahler’s Symphony 1, and a concert named El otro nacionalismo (The Other Nationalism), which was part of Mexico 500 university program (commemorating five centuries since the fall of Tenochtitlan) and which included not Chávez, Revueltas, and Moncayo, but Daniel Ayala, Salvador Contreras and Jacobo Kostakowsky, a Ukrainian living in Mexico whose fair assessment is still in process. The beginning, still behind closed doors (the public returned for the first time on October 30 for a commemorative concert for the victims of the epidemic, with a reduced orchestra), had been a chamber concert with a quartet formed by members of the OFUNAM, with music by Mozart, Schubert, and Britten.

After this first post-pandemic season was developed, the start of the next one, the first of 2022, was delayed due to an increase in the number of infections during the winter. When the OFUNAM returned to the Nezahualcóyotl Hall in February, a month later than planned, it presented a program that crystallized the aforementioned policy and delved deeper into the search for the four programmatic lines. Following, I list the names of the composers and the line of work they reflect: works by Andrée, Bacewicz, Beamish, León, Montgomery, Saariaho, and Shaw, regarding the inclusion of women composers, almost all of them contemporary (reflecting international current affairs through the voice of women composers was a conscious decision); Honegger, Ibert, Korngold, Tippett, Vaughan Williams, and Villa-Lobos, regarding the 20th century, and Galindo, Halffter and Revueltas on the Mexican side. In addition, of course, to the traditional repertoire: more Haydn and Mozart, but also Schubert, Sibelius, Strauss, and Wagner. The season also included Stravinski, who has already earned a place in the regular repertoire, even though he belongs to the 20^th century.

It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the figure of Jessie Montgomery, illustrative of the above. She was born in 1981 in the Lower East Side of New York, of African American descent and trained as a professional violinist. At first, she concentrated on performing and teaching, linked to community groups and chamber ensembles, but she soon began to devote more and more time to composing. Today, her works span different genres and have been performed by the major orchestras of Albany, Atlanta, Dallas, Minnesota, and San Francisco in the United States, as well as the London Philharmonia. She was named composerin-residence of the Chicago Symphony in 2021. The New York Philharmonic chose her as one of the composers for its Project 19, an initiative commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the 19^th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. She has received numerous awards, and her work Rounds for piano and string orchestra has just won the “Best Contemporary Clssical Composition” Grammy. Montgomery’s website sums up her imprint well: “Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21^st century American sound and experience” (see https://www.jessiemontgomery.com/about/). On March 5 and 6, 2022, the OFUNAM premiered its Source Code for string orchestra in Mexico.

I will not detail here all the works included in the second season of 2022, but it featured the Mexican premieres of American composers John Luther Adams and Joan Tower, as well as Metastaseis by Iannis Xenakis, a paradigmatic figure of 20^th century composition whose centenary was celebrated in 2022. During the season, Mexican composers Mario Lavista, Marcela Rodríguez, Silvestre Revueltas and José Francisco Vásquez (founding conductor of the OFUNAM alongside José Rocabruna) and composers Clarice Assad, Louise Farrenc and Sofia Gubaidulina shared programs with Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Dvořák, Ginastera, Schumann, Sibelius and Villa-Lobos, among others.

SPOTLIGHTS
Starting with the third season of 2022, when the Nezahualcóyotl Hall recovered 100 percent capacity (we had progressively grown from 30 to 60 percent in previous seasons due to sanitary measures), the OFUNAM’s programming was articulated around a spotlight, a term we adopted in order to give a particular profile and a narrative to each season; to foster the interest and constancy of the audience that was just beginning to return and had not yet reached its pre-pandemic level, and to allow us to research a specific subject. The first spotlight was classical and quite usual for an orchestra: Brahms, with his four symphonies and his second piano concerto. A prodigy of the instrument, Ukrainian Vadym Kholodenko, was in charge of the latter. In September 2022, that program opened with Valentin Silvestrov’s—who is also from Ukraine—Evening Serenade, as we sought to offer a gesture of solidarity after the Russian invasion in February of that year. The season included world premieres by Mexican musicians Ana Lara and Alejandra Odgers, with works commissioned by the OFUNAM whose premieres had been postponed due to the pandemic, as well as Mexican premieres by Jimmy López, Gabriela Ortiz (pp. 122), Florence Price, and Iannis Xenakis (again for his centenary), the latter piece was in charge of the tireless apostle of new music, the virtuoso British violinist Irvine Arditti. Brahms was accompanied by Bartók, Tchaikovsky, Copland, Mussorgsky, Ponce, Puccini, Shostakovich and Verdi in different programs. The German singer Ute Lemper performed with different songs and cabaret numbers thanks to OFUNAM’s Patronage (a civil association formed to support the orchestra in different ways), and the Tribute to Pérez Prado took place, to which I will return later. The spotlights were designed to permeate other areas of Música UNAM’s programming, as seen in certain concerts of the OJUEM and in the specific design of chamber music programs to accompany the orchestral offer.

It is worth mentioning that in these two seasons, women conductors performed headed the orchestra: Catherine Larsen-Maguire, who returned to the OFUNAM after previous visits, and Anna Handler, Jeri-Lynne Johnson, and Simone Menezes, who made their debut on our podium. The search for female concert conductors remained constant in the following seasons. However, it was not always possible to achieve the task in the desired proportion: it is true that today, many more women are assuming this role, but they are still a minority compared to men, even more so in our country.

In 2023, Sylvain Gasançon began his term as chief conductor after a period without a conductor following the termination of Massimo Quarta’s contract and as a result of an auscultation process carried out with the orchestra and with the subsequent approval of the university authorities. As a sign of welcome, but also due to the technical and musical interest for an orchestra to work the repertoire of that country, the France Spotlight was held. From Berlioz to Messiaen and Grisey, with Debussy and Ravel as the focal points, the OFUNAM delved into the French legacy and also tackled the female composers Boulanger, Finzi, and Tailleferre. The season marked the debut in Mexico of the young Spanish conductor Julia Cruz during that year’s International Piano Festival, an annual initiative of Música UNAM also postponed by the pandemic, which for a month offers concerts for piano and orchestra with the OFUNAM as well as recitals and master classes. With Spanish pianist Alberto Rosado, Cruz conducted the world premiere concert De la alquimia al resplandor (From Alchemy to Radiance) by Mexican Georgina Derbez. The festival featured the formidable pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich in Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos (both gave solo recitals, with programs that conductor, but it sought to clarify one of the avenues traveled by musical modernity until it reached our country, by listening to Revueltas’ Sensemayá in the light of the tremendous Arcana by the Frenchman Varèse (a symbolic figure for the Mexican) and that landmark work of the first half of the 20th century, Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring. Beethoven, the origin of so many things and a continuous reference for an orchestra, opened and closed the season (the Violin Concerto with Shlomo Mintz and Symphony no. 7, respectively), and Jorge Federico Osorio was in charge of his Concerto no. 4 during the festival.

The second season of 2023 was organized around a double spotlight to commemorate two anniversaries: the 150^th anniversary of the birth of the Russian Rachmaninoff and the 100^th anniversary of Hungarian Ligeti. The former was on the music stands of all the orchestras (his piano concertos are a regular feature of symphonic soirées), but the latter, much less so. It deserved, however, special attention because it was a unique figure, as I explained in the program notes for the season: Ligeti is “a sound creator owner of a constant inquisitive spirit and a dazzling creativity, unique in the second half of the 20^th century”. Throughout the season, the OFUNAM performed Rachmaninoff’s Concertos 2 and 3 with the Russian pianists Anna Geniushene and Daniil Trifonov (the latter, thanks to the participation of OFUNAM’s Patronage), as well as his Symphonic Dances; by Ligeti, it offered four works: Atmospheres, Lontano, Melodien, and the Romanian Concerto.

(I take this moment to declare a lost battle: the announcement of the premieres in Mexico. Speaking of Ligeti, it is possible that Melodien and the Romanian Concerto may have been a premiere in Mexico—if anyone possesses other information, I would be grateful to know—but we face the problem that orchestras in Mexico do not always communicate to publishers or rights holders when they program a work. It has already happened to us, regarding a supposed premiere in Mexico of American composer Bruce Adolph, that after consulting with the publishing house in question, we announced the premiere only to receive, shortly after, the protest of a local manager who informed us of a previous authentic premiere in Mexico in which he had participated, years before in some state of the Republic. After the incident, in the face of doubt—impossible to banish in many cases—and in view of the risky guesswork involved in these announcements, we stopped making them except in cases of total certainty. World premieres are another story: those are possible to tell).

Ligeti said of Bartók, his distinguished predecessor and compatriot: “He was the great genius; to me, he still is.” As part of the spotlight, it was worth exploring this link, and the season included Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and his dense but powerful Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. Mendelssohn alternated with the recently deceased Kaija Saariaho, Liszt with Stravinski. The Ukrainian Silvestrov did the same with Shostakovich in another commentary on the war unleashed by Putin: the former’s Prayer for the Ukraine preceded the latter’s Symphony No. 7, the famous Leningrad Symphony, where the Russian composer portrayed the Nazi siege and paid tribute to the resistance of his countrymen, now turned aggressors. The OFUNAM undertook the premiere of two Mexican commissions by Jorge Ritter and Rodrigo Váldez-Hermoso (these are indeed absolute premieres). In addition, the orchestra recovered the figure of Graciela Agudelo, an outstanding educator and composer, by performing her Parajes de la memoria: la selva (Places of memory: the jungle). The season included Montsalvatge’s Puss in Boots for the children’s concert, a concert of Mexican sones and waltzes with several specially commissioned arrangements, and the presentation of Rafael Monge, main oboist of the orchestra, as soloist in the Strauss Concerto (each year those who win the corresponding auditions are presented). The Season was closed with The Ring Without Words, which Lorin Maazel assembled from Wagner’s tetralogy. Beethoven was also present with his third and fifth symphonies.

VIENNA AND THE TRANSITION TO MODERNITY
The year ended with an ambitious project, long meditated and much discussed with Gasançon: a Vienna 1900 Spotlight that would allow us to approach a large selection of Mahler’s symphonic works, always attractive and a favorite of the public, and to contrast them with the composers who came immediately after and were both continuation and rupture: the so-called Second Viennese School—with Schoenberg at its head, flanked by his pupils Berg and Webern, a trio that proclaimed the crisis of the tonal system (pushed to its limits during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20^th century by Liszt, Mahler, and Strauss, among others)—undertook a reform that changed the rules of the game, and produced some of the most revolutionary works of the 20th century, which today, one hundred years later, are still almost absent from orchestral programs.

The time period we demarcated for this spotlight, not being excessively rigid, was from 1900 to 1914 for several reasons: most of Mahler’s work is included in this period and, by setting World War I as a limit, it allowed us to situate the musical crisis exemplified by the Second Viennese School within the framework of the total crisis of the old order (political, social, cultural) that led to that conflict and marked the end of an era and a way of understanding the world. Another imaginary boundary was Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring, whose premiere took place in Paris in May 1913 with the known scandal, and which is, in turn, another watershed, as I pointed out before (of a very different nature from what happened in Vienna and the Germanic sphere), between the old practices and the arrival of musical modernity. The period in discussion was one of great upheaval. This is evident in Mahler’s music as well as in that of the three Austrians who followed him: the old society (portrayed, for example, in Musil’s unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities, itself another adventure in artistic modernity) was breaking down, and it is no coincidence that Freud, among many other reformers, appeared on the scene at that time. I turn once again to the notes written to introduce the season:
Thus, throughout the season, Mahler’s symphonies 4, 5, 9; the Adagio of the unfinished 10^th and The Song of the Earth coexisted with two works by each of the members of the Second School: Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night and Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (the former, one of the composer’s farewells to late romanticism; the latter, one of his most eloquent manifestos of the new path), Berg’s Seven Early Songs and Op. 6, and Webern’s Op. 6 and Op. 10, two collections of miniatures with very contrasting purpose and nature.

Why should we program these works if, except for Schoenberg’s Night, they are rarely heard live and can be challenging for both the orchestra members and the audience? There are several reasons: because they are essential in drawing the line towards what would come later in the 20^th century (for example, Boulez and Stockhausen, but also, in Mexico, Halffter and Enríquez); because they are a reflection of their time, as revealed by their sometimes disturbing, sometimes heartbreaking and hysterical nature; because they were composed over a hundred years ago and should be part of the palette of a professional orchestra, even more so of a university orchestra, open to the whole melting pot of musical expressions; because they offer the public the possibility of experiencing them first hand and not only as references in a text or through a recording (although there are some splendid ones, such as those of Claudio Abbado or Boulez himself); because the adventure of Modernity is vital to understand our time, and assuming this places us among the important orchestras of the world. It is worth mentioning that young Eduardo Mata, the last conductor to present many of these works of the Second Viennese School with the OFUNAM during his period as a conductor (1966-1975), also understood it in this way; we can only regret his early death and emphasize that he has represented a constant source of inspiration for the work undertaken during these years.

To close my review of the season, I want to comment on some other music played because, as in previous seasons, although the spotlight traced a line throughout the quarter, it did not define all the programs. Between the season’s opening Mexican concert and the Christmas concert that finished it, the OFUNAM played Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Revueltas, Rodrigo, and Strauss, in addition to premiering both the work by Hernández Ramos that won the Federico Ibarra National Prize (sponsored by the trust Fideicomiso Ibarra and Música UNAM) and Ibarra’s own 5th Symphony. We had music by the Mexican composer Javier Álvarez, who very sensibly passed away recently, and by Penderecki, with the performance of his horn concerto in the fabulous hands of Croatian Radoval Vlatkovic, all as part of the Festival CulturaUNAM, in which the orchestra participates year after year. Women composers Lara and Saariaho were also featured. With the participation of the OFUNAM’s Patronage, the orchestra was able to invite once again one of its most celebrated accomplices, La Única Internacional Sonora… (the name stops there for legal reasons). Two orchestra members performed as soloists, and the brass and percussion sections offered a musical journey from the Renaissance to the present day.

THE CURRENT YEAR
I will conclude this review of the OFUNAM’s post-pandemic seasons with some notes on the current spotlight (January-February 2024): Parajes (Landscapes). After the Viennese density at the end of the previous year, it was time to clear the mind and soul, and what better way to do so than to embark on a musical journey, to travel through different geographies and eras, including composers and works that are not part of the German-Russian core that defines a large part of the repertoire of symphony orchestras. Thus, the season invites us to enter the gardens of Spain (De Falla) or a Japanese garden, to witness the descent of a flock of birds (Takemitsu), to evoke the river Rhine (Schumann) or green Ireland (Ina Boyle), to admire the Roman pines (Respighi) or the Argentine pampas (Ginastera). Among the depicted landscapes are Veracruz (the essential Revueltas, with Redes) and Zacatecas (Huízar, with his Pueblerinas) but also The Planets of the Solar System (Holst). The northern lights come by courtesy of Grieg, Nielsen, and Sibelius. Works for solo orchestra coexist with piano concertos, as once again, it is time for the Festival, whose guests include Martina Filjak and Jorge Federico Osorio. The season will end with two premieres, a local one (hopefully) by Korean composer Unsuk Chin, a world premiere by Ana Paola Santillán and then perhaps the greatest orchestral classic, whose programming was suggested by the orchestra itself: Beethoven’s Choral Symphony.

For the second season of the year, an Austrian spotlight has already been assembled, with three basic ideas behind it: to celebrate Bruckner’s centenary, to offer to the orchestra and the audience an immersion in the music of the classical period (plenty of Mozart, some Haydn and Beethoven, and Schubert as a corollary) and to offer a glimpse into the Austrian present, with the work of composer Olga Neuwirth. There will also be two concerts for soloists and orchestra by Mexican composers (Eduardo Gamboa and Hebert Vázquez) and, on Children’s Day, the Children’s Concert.

AND WHAT ABOUT MAMBO?
Although he was born in Cuba, Dámaso Pérez Prado is one of our musical geniuses. He requires no validation beyond keep on playing, listening and dancing to him. However, undertaking the transition from the ballroom to the concert hall not only questions the supposed confrontation between low and high culture but is an opportunity for the enrichment and diversification of “classical” music, as has happened on countless occasions throughout history. We have seen it at different times: as a sample of this, it is enough to remember Bartók and his research of Eastern European folklore or our own “nationalist” composers (a term I use with caution since it lends itself to many misunderstandings) from Galindo and Moncayo to Revueltas. Closely related to our university, let us remember that the famous “Danzón no. 2” by Arturo Márquez was commissioned by the OFUNAM. The list could be longer, with the stylized dances from Bach’s suites or Brahms’s Hungarian dances, to cite two examples from the canon. (It should be noted that this transit also occurs in the other direction, from the space of “high culture” to that of the “popular,” realm, but that’s another story).

Concerts where representatives of two musical spheres coexist, for example, a mambo orchestra (or a rock band or a mariachi) and a symphony orchestra, have long been common; they generate great expectations and are often commercial successes. Some of them are very complete achievements and tend to remain in the audience’s and promoters’ memory for a long time: as an outstanding example, we have the famous Symphonic Queen. I do not downplay the value of these meetings, which have their impact and their audience. From a strictly musical perspective, however, this kind of crossover between the two spheres can be rather shallow, and usually it is the symphony or philharmonic orchestra who loses out, despite the prestige it brings, since it is so often limited to providing a simple accompaniment that does not take advantage of all its capabilities.

I am a great enthusiast of the Carefoca (Pérez Prado’s alias; “seal-face”) since the first time I heard his music, thanks to my father’s admiration for him, so the question came immediately: How can we pay tribute to him and at the same time undertake a musical adventure that will enrich the orchestra? Leonard Bernstein, with his West Side Story, was one inspiration; another, more personal, was Javier Álvarez, who, in addition to all that he contributed to symphonic and chamber music in our country, is one of the greatest electroacoustic composers we have had; he has to his credit, among many other works, a Mambo à la Braque. This is how the answer was outlined: a selection of Pérez Prado’s mambos would be presented by the OFUNAM as arrangements commissioned to different composers, among them Álvarez himself (who, in October 2022, a few months before his death, was able to be present at the concert to hear his versions of “Caballo Negro” and “Mambo a la Sax”). Héctor Infanzón, Gonzalo Romeu, Mario Santos, Rosino Serrano, Erick Tapia, Abi Terrazas, and Josefa de Velasco also participated in the orchestral translations. Traduttore traditore, goes the Italian saying. However, this treason was an act of admiration and attention towards our different roots (although they started on the neighboring island). The concert was part of the Festival CulturaUNAM and had spectacular results. Hopefully, it will be repeated and enriched in the future.

BESIDES THE OFUNAM
I will dwell for a moment on the parallel programming that several guest musicians provided as a counterpoint to the OFUNAM in order to complete the scope of the spotlights offered with their chamber music concerts. French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in addition to giving a master class for several young students during his presence at the 2022 Piano Festival (a format in which the student plays a piece and receives the teacher’s comments and indications), offered an actual master class in interpretation when he tackled at the Nezahualcóyotl Hall, within the France Spotlight, Olivier Messiaen’s Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus, a portentous and seminal work of 20th century piano that Aimard carved over two hours, in a dazzling display of musical wisdom, total understanding of Messiaen’s different purposes and unparalleled mastery of his instrument. I would also like to highlight the boldness and skill of the young Mexican pianists Israel Barrios and Sebastián Espinosa at playing the challenging music of Nancarrow and Ligeti during the spotlight dedicated to the latter. And what can we say about the musical and scenic eloquence of German soprano Sarah Maria Sun, accompanied by a sextet of local performers conducted by Christian Gohmer, as she tackled Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, another fundamental work of the 20^th century that was preceded by several pieces—short in duration but not in impact—by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, performed by different combinations formed by this sextet, with the participation of Luz del Carmen Águila, Anna Arnal, Fernando Domínguez, Iván Pérez and Betsaida Romero, with Gonzalo Gutiérrez present throughout the program at the piano.

The OJUEM, integrated entirely by scholarship holders, represents a seedbed for young performers eager to embark on an orchestral career and has been a launching pad for many who, after a period of training, join a professional orchestra, including the OFUNAM itself. Since the return from the pandemic, the OJUEM devoted special attention to the music of Mexican composer Alfonso de Elías and was in charge of premiering the orchestral works that emerged from the Arturo Márquez Chair, an ongoing project of Música UNAM in which one of our most representative composers works each year with three young also Mexican musicians, leading to the premiere of a work for ensemble and an orchestral work by each scholarship holder. Without underestimating the work focused on ensemble composition, the case of the latter, that is, knowing that one is writing for an orchestra with a guaranteed premiere, represents an infrequent opportunity in the career of a young composer.

Because of its different logic, practice and repertoire, The Ancient Music Academy (AMA)—another group formed by scholarship holders—deserves its own space. It concentrates on the informed interpretation of the baroque repertoire and its programs per semester have also been articulated around thoracic axes dealing, among other music, with the viceregal legacy and Bach, in the Simón Bolívar Amphitheater, its usual venue, as well as in other university and external locations. On behalf of the Faculty of Music, we had the presence of the Estanislao Mejía Symphony Orchestra and its Symphonic Band (memorable for its collaboration with the students at Dartmouth University, United States) in the Nezahualcóyotl Hall, as well as chamber music in the Carlos Chávez Hall and the audition of soloists to perform with one of our orchestras. Activities of very different profiles, from son jarocho to symphony orchestra, were presented under the auspices of Música UNAM in different venues of the university, from the Botanical Garden to the Preparatoria 6 and FES Acatlán. In terms of educational activities, the Cátedra Márquez gathered different experts to offer a seminar dedicated to 500 years of music in Mexico, and the Cátedra Mata did the same by dealing with several outstanding names in Latin American music: Ginastera, Orbón, and VillaLobos, among others.

FROM ONLINE OFFER TO PRESENCE
Two very different curatorial initiatives remain online, testimony to the restructuring during the pandemic but also to lines of work that yielded excellent results: Trasfrontera (a word meaning border crossing), a project deployed over many months that consisted of bringing together representatives of different musical styles in an emblematic recording studio in a world capital (London, New York, Helsinki or Bogotá, among others) to record different presentations that Música UNAM broadcast on its networks, and Laboratorios sonorous (Sound Labs), an invitation to sound artists and musicians, primarily Mexican but with some exceptions, to share their creation and research processes through videos recorded by themselves, sometimes preceded by an allusive talk. Trasfrontera has had only one face-to-face outing with the Trasfrontera CU concert, held in Las Islas in September 2022, with several Mexican musicians participating in the online edition dedicated to our country. Laboratorios sonoros, on the other hand, has been maintained as an ongoing series that is presented periodically in the spaces of the Cultural Center with the same purpose: to offer a gateway to the research and sound discoveries, sometimes with scenic components, of the local alternative scene.

CONCLUSION
All of the above reflects the task mentioned at the beginning: to offer, through the different channels available, a university musical proposal that is part of UNAM’s global project of cultural dissemination and that adheres to the lines of work promoted by the Head Office in charge of this task. While the natural vocation of Música UNAM over the years has been the organization of activities in the different forums, both those of the University Cultural Center and external ones (what we now call “presential” activities), the pandemic taught us that it is possible to have another scope, with another type of impact, through networks; this is something we cannot put aside.

It is impossible to understand the work of cultural diffusion from the University without aspiring to create initiatives and activities that combine the representation of the past while paying attention to current problems and proposals, searching for inclusion and openness recognized and appreciated by the audiences, especially the younger ones, although for a sector of the latter, it means a change of paradigm. It is also necessary to trace and maintain the line that links us with the illustrious history of university institutions—with their permanence and continuous work throughout the years—as spaces of proposal, memory, and teaching that invite us to undertake the fascinating adventure of cultural manifestations.

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