There are many ways to describe the upcoming March 1 concert of the New Horizons Symphony Orchestra. It’s a “side-by-side” with a youth orchestra from Mexico, it’s a Sister City concert, it’s intergenerational, cross-cultural and cross-border. But for conductor Jorge Martinez, it’s also “a concert of coincidences,” a coming together of numerous unexpected events and alliances.
Some thirty teenaged musicians from the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de Torreón, the youth symphony of Torreón, are traveling to Las Cruces to perform alongside the New Horizons Orchestra in a concert that features music by American and Latino composers. Martinez said the plans for the concert started when he discovered that Las Cruces was a Sister City with Lerdo, Mexico, which is – much like Las Cruces and Mesilla – adjacent to, and part of the same district as, Torreon. Then he learned that one of his students from Silver City was friends with Ethan Eager, the conductor of the Torreón youth orchestra, an orchestra Martinez was already familiar with because he himself is from that region.
“This concert is the result of many coincidences. And now we are here,” Martinez told Intermezzo host Leora Zeitlin in this interview at KRWG. “I am so excited about this concert, and most importantly, to have people from different places come together celebrating life, and what we can do for each other. I think music is the perfect vehicle to do this.”
Listen here for more of the back story to this collaborative and intergenerational event. The program includes music from the classical, jazz, mariachi, folk, and film score genres, by George Gershwin, Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Juventino Rosas, Rafael Hernandez, Jose Moncayo and others. The concert also features Joshua Lucero, a teenage singer from El Paso, singing two songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. The free concert takes place Sunday, March 1, at 3 p.m., at the Atkinson Recital Hall.
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