Gabriela Montero, pianist, composer and activist, makes her Minnesota Orchestra debut as both composer and performer, playing her own Latin Piano Concerto, which Montero says “shows the complexities of South American life.” On the podium is conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, who recorded the work wi...

In 1941, Mexican percussionist, composer and conductor José Pablo Moncayo wrote Huapango at the request of Carlos Chávez for the Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Based on the folk music and dance of the Veracruz area on the Gulf of Mexico, Moncayo wrote a work that has become somewhat of an unoffici...

Venezuelan-born composer and performer Gabriela Montero discusses learning to play the piano from an early age.

YourClassical MPR host Melissa Ousley talks with retired music librarian and music director John Michel, Minnesota Public Radio Technical Director Michael Osborne, and former YourClassicalMPR host Brian Newhouse about the 100 years of broadcasting Minnesota Orchestra concerts.

Ravel grew up familiar with traditional Spanish music, and he drew on this for his Rapsodie. An understated Malagueña and a vigorous Habanera lead to a vigorous finale that overflows with melodic invention.

Venezuelan-born Gabriela Montero’s Latin Piano Concerto—performed this week with the composer as soloist—merges the European classical concerto form with idioms, traditions and characteristics of her native continent. Montero notes that her concerto reflects South America’s complexities and contr...

Carlos Chávez’s one-movement Sinfonía India is based on traditional melodies of Indigenous tribes from the western states of his home country of Mexico, fused with European classical elements. Of special note are a solo horn singing a tune from the Yaqui people of Sonora and a percussion section ...

This suite, comprising selected movements from the composer’s Suites No. 1 and 2 selected by conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, are a mosaic of vibrant dances and colorful melodies infused with the character and charm of the Spanish countryside.