San Diego Spotlight : ‘Fiesta’ Conductor Mixes Latin, Western Influences

Moments of self-revelation come at the most unexpected moments. Two years ago, the American-raised Odaline de la Martinez was in Argentina conducting a program of her compositions at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon. Early one morning, a street vendor’s cry woke her.

“It was the ice seller’s cry ‘Hielo!’ that took me back to my childhood in Cuba. All of a sudden, that part of my Cuban past that had been frozen began to defrost. I had never really thought of myself as Cuban-American. Since then, I have had a wonderful love affair with Latin American music and culture.”

De la Martinez will bring that enthusiasm and affinity for Latin American music to Copley Symphony Hall at 7 p.m. Sunday when she leads the San Diego Symphony in its “Fiesta Sinfonica,” the orchestra’s first program in its multicultural outreach project to salute the music and culture of Mexico. The vivacious conductor explained her musical odyssey before rehearsals Thursday.

“My family left Cuba in 1961. Because the U.S. was such a welcoming country, we grew up as Americans, and the Cuban part of my identity was frozen. I went to England--to the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship--to study avant-garde music.”

But the more De la Martinez worked with European contemporary music, the more she realized something was missing. She sought out Latin American music and began to perform it in the ensembles she founded. With New Zealand flutist Ingrid Culliford, she formed the new-music ensemble LONTANO, a musical term that means “played as if from a distance.”

“We liked the sound of the word, and it did allude to our origins, which were quite a distance from London.”

The group toured and quickly gained respect as well as recording contracts. To complement LONTANO, De la Martinez formed the London Chamber Symphony to explore more traditional repertory. In 1984, she made the record books as the first woman to conduct a BBC Promenade Concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Just a year ago, she inaugurated the European Women’s Orchestra to champion the works of women composers.

With her clearly defined interest in Latin American music, 20th-Century repertory and women composers, de la Martinez acknowledged that she runs the risk of being pegged as a specialist.

“But I’m not worried about labels,” she said, dismissing the notion with a wave of her hand. “I simply do the music that I am passionate about. And, for the record, I happen to be crazy about Beethoven.”

Passionate barely begins to encompass De la Martinez, who unleashed a long list of current and future projects with an auctioneer’s nonstop cadence.

“After LONTANO’s first two recordings, we decided to form our own record company, Lorelt, to produce our CDs. We made a recording of music by Scottish composer Judith Weir, who is mainly known for her operas. In April our disc of music by British women composers will be released. We received so many advance orders for that disc when it was announced that we have already scheduled a second volume of compositions by British women.”

Other projects include a series for BBC television on Latin American music, a book about women in music called “Mendelssohn’s Sister,” and a complete recording of Pierre Boulez’s “Le Marteau sans Maitre.” An advocate of Heitor Villa Lobos’ music--in 1988 the government of Brazil awarded her the Villa Lobos medal in recognition of her advocacy of the Brazilian composer--she will make a compact disc devoted to little-known chamber and choral music by Villa Lobos.

On Sunday, De la Martinez will weave the San Diego Symphony through some of the most colorful Mexican symphonic music from the mid-20th Century. Of these pieces, Carlos Chavez’s “Sinfonia India” and Silvestre Revueltas’ “La Noche de los Mayas” are the best known. The more exotic examples chosen by De la Martinez are Revueltas’ “Sensemaya,” a tone poem based on the poetic images of the black Cuban writer Nicolas Guillen, and Blas Galindo’s “Sone de Mariachi,” a clever orchestral imitation of Mexico City’s outdoor mariachi bands.

“Fiesta Sinfonica” will also feature San Diego Memorial Academy’s Ballet Folklorico dance ensemble accompanied by Mariachi Real. Memorial Academy (a bilingual junior high school) and the local chapter of Future Leaders of America (a leadership development organization for Mexican-American youths) are the two beneficiaries of the concert, which is underwritten by a grant from AT & T.

Tickets are $10 to $50 and are available from the symphony box office, 699-4205.

Stark comparisons. Though it’s no surprise to San Diego Symphony players, a recently published table of 1991-92 wages for U.S. orchestras put them near the cellar. At the top of the heap is the New York Philharmonic, which offers an annual minimum salary (the basic comparison figure in the field) of $61,880.

Among the orchestras that offer more than $60,000 but below the New York standard are Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Offering between $50,000 and $60,000 annually are Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, St. Louis and Washington’s National.

San Diego’s annual minimum of $24,480 betters a mere seven orchestras, including Colorado, Louisville, New Jersey and Phoenix.

Figures come from the February issue of “Senza Sordino,” the official publication of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

PARISIAN ORGANIST AT SAN DIEGO CATHEDRAL

Daniel Roth, organist at the historic Paris church of St. Sulpice, plays an organ recital at 8 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. Successor to famed organist-composers Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupre, Roth is a virtuoso and improviser in the great French tradition. On Sunday, he will play works by Louis Marchand, J. S. Bach, Cesar Franck and Dupre. He will also improvise on a submitted theme.