Providing a lively note near Day of the Dead

La Catrina brings chamber music to a more diverse crowd

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

HICKORY - La Catrina was trying to be a little scary this week.

It was the day before Halloween -- two days before the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead -- and the string quartet was hoping the 80 kids at the Centro Latino performance would feel a little creepy when they heard Franz Shubert's "Death and the Maiden."

"This one is about a chase between death and a lady," said Daniel Vega-Albela, one of the quartet's two violinists. "Guess who ends up winning?"

The string group -- three Mexicans and a New York-born Puerto Rican -- launched into the piece, playing the high-pitched ferocity of death with fervor and the whimsical protests of the maiden softly.

The Tuesday evening performance -- held for a group of mostly Latino students -- was one of several shows La Catrina will play during its three-year residency with the Western Piedmont Symphony, which began in the fall.

But the group, said Chris Brown, the symphony's executive director, isn't getting attention only from the regular classical musician patrons, but from a more diverse audience that might not typically listen to the violin, viola and cello.

"Chamber music is a niche market," Brown said, "but it is one (La Catrina) is opening up by their style ... They play newer music and very lively pieces with great verve and vigor."

La Catrina, one of only a few professional Latino string quartets in the United States, draws much of its inspiration from Mexico's culture and traditions.

So, when the original group started playing together 10 years ago in Morelia, Mexico, and was choosing a name, it wanted something representative of the entire country.

"Day of the Dead is something everyone in Mexico knows about," said cellist Alan Daowz.

And La Calavera de la Catrina, a 1913 etching of a well-dressed skeleton woman by Jose Guadalupe Posada, is one of the best-known images of the Day of the Dead celebrations, Daowz said.

"La Catrina, with her mischievous smile," the group notes in its performance program, "pleads with the living to seize the moment, and through music and dance, find life's meaning."

The group separated for a while but came back together -- this time with George Anthony Figueroa on violin -- a few years ago and has performed as a group and as soloists in Mexico, the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Collectively, the men have more than 86 years playing string instruments and have all earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music -- but they say it is the blending of their backgrounds and attention to newer pieces that elevate their sound and draw attention from the audience and critics.

"Chamber music is sort of dying in a way," said violist Jorge Martinez, "so we start by playing things (younger audiences) want to hear and slowly bring them into it. How can they not like it after that?"

Figueroa, 36, began his classical training at age 6 and is the son of a composer in Puerto Rico. Vega-Albela, 36, was 9 when he started playing the violin but, with a grandmother who was trained as a concert pianist and taught lessons, was always surrounded by music.

The group's violist, 30-year-old Martinez, took piano lessons as a child and was 17 when he was introduced to string instruments at a festival. And Daowz, 34, said he didn't plan to become a professional cellist, but when art school didn't turn out to be what he expected, he started thinking about music.

Though they're from different backgrounds, they come together in the group. "You can hear the four different sounds," Figueroa said. "Somebody usually becomes the diva, and the others are overlooked. But in our quartet, that is not the case."

And while La Catrina draws much of its inspiration from Latin traditions, Vega-Albela said he hopes that their cultural background isn't what defines them.

"It makes people more comfortable to put people in these neat, little packages," he said. "But we can play Mozart, and we can play tango. And we can play both well."

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