On today’s date in 2004, the Utah Symphony and conductor Keith Lockhart premiered Three Latin-American Dances by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Just a few days later, the same forces recorded Frank’s music for a release, to be sandwiched between Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.
Frank’s first dance, Jungle Jaunt opens with what she calls “an unabashed tribute” to the urban jungle evoked in Bernstein’s West Side Story. Her second dance, Highland Harawi, is more melancholy, perhaps a nod to that strain in Rachmaninoff’s music, and evokes the sounds of the bamboo quena flute of the Andes.
Her third dance, The Mestizo Waltz, is a pun on the famous Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt. As Frank explained: “This final [dance] is a lighthearted tribute to the mestizo or mixed-race music of the South American Pacific coast. It evokes the romancero tradition of popular songs and dances that mix influences from indigenous Indian cultures, African slave cultures, and western brass bands.”
Frank is of mixed Peruvian and Jewish background. When asked about how her heritage affects her music, she replied, “Sometimes the Latin influences are quite evident, and sometimes they are quite subtle. And of course, ‘Latin’ can mean so many different things. There is no one single Latin identity, as any Latino/Latinoamericano would tell you.”
Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): Three Latin American Dances; Utah Symphony; Keith Lockhart, conductor; Reference Recording 105