Triangulo Makes Past Feel at Home

Triangulo--a nifty consortium staffed by Cuban-born clarinetist (and Latin jazz star) Paquito D’Rivera, Brazilian-born cellist Gustavo Tavares, and Uruguay-born pianist Pablo Zinger--brought a brace of often terrific, instantly appealing, mostly little-known Latin American pieces to Cal State Northridge on Friday night. And it did so with an engaging, audience-friendly, sometimes irreverent flair (even when tuning, the musicians sprinkled in jokey quotes from Bach and Richard Strauss).

With just one brief example, a suite of Danzas Cubanas by Ignacio Cervantes, Triangulo made a point; Latin classical musicians were happily mixing dance rhythms into their music as far back as 1880 in a manner that sounds disarmingly contemporary. Argentina’s Angel Lasala, who died earlier this year, used western Argentine folk music in his “Trio De Las Serranias,” which overflowed with irresistible tunes sometimes based on pentatonic scales. Brazilian composer Pixinguinha was represented by four short works that ranged from purple-prosed sentiments to frantic forward motion.

Triangulo also commissions new music, offering as a sample a rhapsodic, sometimes flamboyant movement from the suite “America” by Brazil’s Wagner Tiso, who, like D’Rivera, is best-known here in jazz circles. A set of pieces by D’Rivera made freewheeling use of the Cuban danzon as well as a suave Afro-Mexican huapango, and you could hear a savage Bartok-like element emerging now and then within four pieces by tango king Astor Piazzolla.

Indeed, if we really care about chamber music’s future in this country, it would be a good idea to look south more often.