Wednesday, August 13
A Recital by Sharon Isbin guitar
Aspen Festival Ensemble
Elizabeth Schulze, conductor

Enrique Granados/Miguel Llobet

Spanish Dance No. 5, “Andaluza,” from Twelve Spanish Dances, op. 37

The Catalan composer Enrique Granados (1867–1916) looked outside of his own region to other Hispanic traditions for musical inspiration. Granados and his friends Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla studied with the Catalan musicologist and composer Felipe Pedrell, who not only instilled in them an interest in Spanish folk traditions, but also the legacy of past Spanish composers, including Tomás Luis de Victoria and Joan Brudieu.

Granados studied piano in Paris before returning to Barcelona in 1889, where he taught a generation of Spanish musicians including Manuel de Falla and Pablo Casals. His works are almost exclusively for small ensembles: solo piano, chamber works, and so on. Best-known for his 1911 suite for piano, Goyescas, Granados is (along with Albéniz, next on this program) one of the first Spanish composers to enjoy an international career based on nationalistic Spanish styles.

Like Albéniz, Granados wrote many works for piano that imitate the sounds and techniques of Spanish guitar-playing without actually quoting authentic folk melodies. Consequently, many of these works have been transcribed for guitar, returning them to their idiomatic origins. The most famous is the Spanish Dance No. 5 from Twelve Spanish Dances, Opus 37, published in 1890.

This dance is also sometimes known as “Andaluza” or “Playera,” showing that even though he was Catalan, Granados was also interested in the music of southern Spain. But unlike Albéniz, he approached this tradition as more of an outsider—a northern Spaniard imitating the music of a different national region rather than one who believed Andalusia was his ancestral home and the “true” Spain. The ostensibly “southern” traits, including major-minor variations of the cadence, are filtered through a nostalgic northern aesthetic, enhanced perhaps by the fact that Granados likely wrote this Spanish dance while in Paris. — © Steven Ledbetter

Isaac Albéniz/Andres Segovia

Mallorca, barcarolle, op. 202

Isaac Albéniz is to Spain what Aaron Copland is to the United States—a prime force in the creation of a truly national music. Albéniz, after showing precocious gifts as a pianist (he played his first recital at the age of four) traveled widely to perform and study. His peripatetic youth took him to Argentina (as a stowaway at the age of twelve!), Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and all the way across the United States to San Francisco. He returned to Spain in 1873, then went to study with the distinguished pedagogues of the Leipzig Conservatory, Salomon Jadassohn and Carl Reinecke.

Further concertizing led to a meeting with Liszt in 1880, with whom he perfected his piano technique. This was a crucial encounter for Albéniz, but equally important was his acquaintance (along with Granados, above) with the Spanish composer and musicologist Felipe Pedrell, who encouraged him to delve into the musical resources of his own country, and who opened him up to the riches of true Spanish music, as opposed to the flashy imitations of foreign visitors. Following several years in London—where he wrote operas on contract, setting librettos written by an English banker—he visited Paris in 1893, where he had connections with Debussy, Fauré, d’Indy, and Dukas. He became a teacher at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he lived, on and off, for nearly ten years. He was, of course, active as a composer and pianist during this time, and thus was part of the great ferment of musical activity that we lump under the general designation of Impressionism.

Albéniz’s music combines elements of Lisztian display, Spanish folk music, and Impressionist harmony. In the latter connection, he was as much an innovator as Debussy and Ravel, whose piano works owe much to Albéniz.

Albéniz published Mallorca in 1891 as an independent piano work (not part of one of his suites of Spanish-titled pieces). Like many of his works, its title is a region of Spain—in this case the Mediterranean island just east of the Spanish mainland. And since it is an island a barcarolle, or “boat song,” is obviously an appropriate kind of music to celebrate it, with its gently rocking 6/8 rhythm and flowing, wavy melodic lines. The guitar transcription is by Andrés Segovia.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Heitor Villa-Lobos

from Twelve Études

The Twelve Études by the well-known Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959)—of which this concert features the eighth and the first—are perhaps some of the most beloved and frequently performed works for guitar. Many have pointed out its technical appeal, including the famous Uruguayan guitarist and pedagogue Abel Carlevaro (1916–2001), who wrote: “These studies are not passive in nature; they present us with a vivid appraisal of the guitar’s possibilities.” But beyond its technical intricacies, it also conveys something of Villa-Lobos’s unique musical personality, shaped at the intersection of popular and classical music as well as across Brazilian culture and a modern sense of cosmopolitanism—especially via Paris.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Antonio Lauro

Vals Venezolano No. 3, “Natalia”

Natalia, the third Vals Venezolano by Venezuelan guitarist and composer Antonio Lauro (1917–1986), is another pillar of the guitar repertoire worldwide. With far less ambiguity than Villa-Lobos’s Études, Lauro engages with vernacular rhythms, and in this case with the Venezuelan waltz, a hybrid form that was the result of an “indigenization” process—or even better, a “Venezualization”—of the European waltz. The piece was dedicated to Natalia, Lauro’s daughter, who recalled later: “When my dad wrote that waltz, he hadn’t married my mom and it was still ten years before my birth. . . . When I turned fifteen, there was already a version for orchestra and my dad asked me to dance; the orchestra of Daniel Milano was playing. While dancing he dedicated the waltz to me and told me that, from that day onward, the piece would have my name.” Those familiar with the Latin American tradition of quinciañeras may imagine the emotional impact of the scene.

— © Matthew Mugmon

Isaías Savio

Batucada from Cênas brasileiras (Brazilian Scenes)

Isaías Savio was born in Uruguay in 1900 and moved to Brazil in 1931, becoming a Brazilian citizen and living there for the rest of his life. He played a key role in establishing the guitar program at Conservatório Dramático e Musical de São Paulo, thereby having a substantial influence on the development of Brazilian guitar performance and composition.

Batucada is taken from his Cênas brasileiras (Brazilian Scenes), a collection of ten short pieces inspired by the sights and sounds of his adopted home. In the nineteenth century, batuque had been used to refer to a range of Afro-Brazilian cultural practices centered on drumming, which gave rise to both capoeira and samba dance forms; batucada is now a name given to sambas that only use percussion. Savio’s piece pays tribute to this origin; lively melodic sections give way to passages where the open strings are strummed percussively or single notes are repeated, focusing our attention on the piece’s dynamic details and rhythms.

— © Joel Rust

Karen LeFrak

Habanera Nights | Urban Tango | Miami Concerto for Guitar & Chamber Orchestra

One of the reasons Sharon Isbin, the renowned guitarist who founded Juilliard’s guitar program, admires Karen LeFrak is that she is, as Isbin has put it, “a real Renaissance woman.” LeFrak is a pianist, composer, and musicologist (notably, she is the author of an award-winning master’s thesis on New York Philharmonic commissions), but she’s also a poodle breeder and the author of children’s books. As Isbin puts it, “There’s really no one like Karen LeFrak.” LeFrak, whose music includes solo, chamber, and orchestral works, has been performed widely; she has also combined her various interests with her books Jake the Philharmonic Dog and Sleepover at the Museum, which have become multimedia experiences performed with symphony orchestras.

A new album with LeFrak’s engaging and accessible music, Romántico, documents the collaboration between Isbin and LeFrak with recordings of Habanera Nights, Urban Tango, and the Miami Concerto for Guitar & Chamber Orchestra. On the album, which was recorded in October 2024 and released in May 2025, Javier Diaz—whose own music is also featured this summer at Aspen—lent his mastery of the bongos to the Miami Concerto with Isbin and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Enrico Lopez-Yañez, and to the chamber works Habanera Nights and Urban Tango.

Habanera Nights refers directly to the kind of dance, closely associated with Spanish and Cuban culture, that employs duple meter and a distinctive pattern that begins with a dotted rhythm. Well-known interpretations of the habanera in classical music include ones by the composers George Bizet (whose Carmen contains probably the most famous example), Gustav Mahler (in the second movement of his Seventh Symphony), and others. The rhythmic pattern is also evident in Lerner and Loewe’s “The Rain in Spain” from My Fair Lady. In LeFrak’s entry into the genre, guitar arpeggios kick off the proceedings, joined soon by bongo, shaker, guiro, and claves; the piano then enters with the distinctive habanera rhythm. Early in the proceedings, LeFrak highlights Isbin’s guitar through a combination of dance rhythms and energetic figures reminiscent of the music of J. S. Bach, while the cello’s sustained notes add warmth. Later, the guitar briefly takes up the specific habanera rhythm, and throughout the piece LeFrak layers related rhythms to evoke a vibrant dance scene.

The tango is a dance related to the habanera, and it is closely associated with Argentina and Uruguay. LeFrak calls Urban Tango, for guitar, piano, and percussion, her “personal take on the tango.” “The couple,” she writes, “represented in my piece by the guitar and piano, embody the partnership between the two instruments, equally generous and soulful, blending with the unconventional sounds of life in my native New York City, in a captivating dance with each other, sensually flowing, yet edgy with heightened emotions—a glass and concrete jungle set on top of a beautiful city island.” Especially notable are the irregular, shifting rhythms that characterize the opening portion of the work, and the relative prominence of dissonance throughout compared to the more melodically and harmonically straightforward Habanera Nights.

Dance is also a central component of the Miami Concerto, whose premiere Sharon Isbin performed with the Miami Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eduardo Marturet. It’s a work LeFrak calls “a tribute to Miami, my second home, and the closeness and love I feel for this ebullient, colorful, and lively city.” In the first movement, Bailamos, LeFrak employs the guagancó, a fast couple’s dance in the Cuban tradition of the rumba. In the cinematic opening, which the composer likens to a beautiful evening’s sunset, a noble horn melody over sustained strings is answered in the oboe. Then the dance begins, with the guitar introducing the principal melodies and the orchestra keeping up with it, all overtop an electrifying percussion complement. In the second movement, Romantico, LeFrak again turns to the tango. “Here, a Romanticism evoking a calm, warm wind on a seashore is manifested in the cantabile of the guitar and accompanying lush strings,” LeFrak writes. This movement, operating as the usual slow movement in the center of a concerto, highlights in particular the guitar’s lyricism. Flutes and violins join the guitar in a sort of passionate duet between the guitar and those sections, after which a guitar cadenza—the only one in the composition, as the guitar never remains completely alone for too long—leads into what LeFrak calls “another nostalgic theme of hope and optimism.” Sweeping interventions from the orchestra lead eventually to the serene, lullaby-like ending of this movement, the longest of the three. Festivo, the third movement, “showcases the bembé—standard drumming patterns originating in Afro-Cuban cultures,” as LeFrak describes it. Fittingly, then, LeFrak allows the percussion to set the stage; the rest of the orchestra follows, and then the guitar is off to the races. LeFrak views the orchestra and guitar as “equal partners contributing thematic and rhythmic material” of the movement, and indeed, the guitar alternates between offering driving rhythms and arresting melodies as the orchestra does the same—and this finale, with its echoes of the Feria from Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, never lets up until the very end.

— © Matthew Mugmon

Hailed as a pre-eminent guitarist of our time, multiple Grammy winner Sharon Isbin was named Musical America’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year—she is the only guitarist in the publication’s history to receive this honor—and was inducted in 2023 into the Guitar Foundation of America’s Hall of Fame. She has performed with over 200 orchestras, premiered nearly 100 works written for her by renowned composers, and given sold-out performances in celebrated halls across forty countries. Winner of the Munich ARD, Madrid, and Toronto competitions, Germany’s Echo Klassik, and Guitar Player’s Best Classical Guitarist awards, she performed in Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film The Departed, at the White House by invitation of President Obama, and at the 2010 Grammy Awards as the only classical performer. The PBS documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour won ASCAP’s Television Broadcast Award. Her discography of over forty recordings includes Romántico (2025), featuring Latin dance-inspired world premieres by Karen LeFrak; Live in Aspen with Amjad Ali Khan; Souvenirs of Spain & Italy with the Pacifica Quartet; her Grammy-winning Journey to the New World with guest Joan Baez; and her Latin Grammy-nominated disc with the New York Philharmonic, to date their only recording with a guitar soloist. Recent highlights include a work commissioned for her by Carnegie Hall, a twenty-one-city Guitar Passions tour with Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, and a collaboration with Sting. She is the founding director of the guitar departments at The Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival.

With passion, verve and illuminating musicianship, Elizabeth Schulze has been conducting orchestras and opera companies, advocating for music education, and electrifying audiences in the U.S. and abroad for more than two and a half decades. Recipient of the 2013 Sorel Medallion in Conducting for her adventurous programming, Schulze is in her twenty-sixth season as the music director and conductor of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and is the recently appointed music director and conductor of the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra in Alaska. Her past positions with U.S. orchestras include an appointment as associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, music director and conductor of the Flagstaff, Waterloo/Cedar Falls, and Kenosha symphony orchestras, principal guest conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, cover conductor and conducting assistant for the New York Philharmonic, and assistant conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic, an appointment sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds graduate degrees in orchestral and choral conducting from SUNY at Stony Brook. She was the first doctoral fellow in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University and was selected as a conducting fellow at L’École d’Arts Americaines in France. She was the recipient of the first Aspen Music School Conducting Award. At Aspen, she worked with Murry Sidlin, Lawrence Foster, and Sergiu Commissiona. As a Tanglewood fellow, she worked with Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier, and Leonard Bernstein

Jonathan Haas is known worldwide as a soloist, orchestral timpanist, percussionist, conductor, teacher, clinician, and entrepreneur. He has garnered international acclaim for his performances of Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for two timpanists and orchestra, which he commissioned and has performed seventy times worldwide with numerous top orchestras. Haas is the principal percussionist of the American Symphony, principal timpanist of the New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, principal timpanist of the Aspen Chamber Symphony, percussionist of the American Composers Orchestra, and president of Gemini Music Productions. Haas is a professor of music, director of percussion studies, co-director of the orchestra program, and conductor of the Contemporary Music Ensemble at New York University. He also teaches at the Juilliard Pre-College Division (JPC), and conducts the JPC and Aspen percussion ensembles. Haas has performed and recorded with Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Aerosmith; Black Sabbath; The Who; and Grammy award-winning Zappa’s Universe, among others. In his quest to showcase the timpani in unusual musical settings, Haas is known for his Hot Jazz Timpani performances and for highlighting a unique instrumental combination with his nine-piece Latin/Jazz ensemble, Johnny H. & The Prisoners of Swing. Haas is also the author of the timpani method book Jazz Virtuostics for Timpani.

Mexican-born percussionist Carlos Alvarez is committed to promoting the importance of classical music through performance and education. He performs regularly throughout the Bay Area and is an avid educator in the Central Valley and Bay Area regions. He is currently working toward a Bachelor of Music degree in percussion performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studies with Jacob Nissly. Carlos Alvarez’s summer in Aspen is supported by a William Randolph Hearst Scholarship.

Percussionist Christian Santos is an avid soloist and orchestral performer. He was an associate member with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in their 2024–25 season, and was a winner of the Northwestern University Concerto Competition. A passionate educator, he has served as teaching assistant at the Interlochen Arts Academy and as front ensemble instructor for New Jersey’s Tenafly and Dumont High Schools. Christian recently obtained his Master of Music degree at Northwestern University. He previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music and is a graduate of the Juilliard Pre-College Division. Christian Santos’s work in Aspen is supported by a Douglas Howard Percussion Fellowship.

Cameron Marquez is a percussionist, chamber musician, soloist, and educator based in Chicago, Illinois. As a fellow of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, he engages with the Chicago community through contemporary chamber concerts, educational engagement, and projects that uplift underrepresented communities. Marquez is a substitute percussionist in the New World Symphony, Dubuque Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Evanston Symphony, Lake County Symphony, World Ballet Company, Ballet Indiana, and Chicago Composers Orchestra, and is a founding member of the Chicago-based percussion collective Bridge Percussion. Marquez also serves as percussion coordinator and private lessons instructor at Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois. Cameron Marquez is a 2025 recipient of the Avedis Zildjian Company Percussion Scholarship..

Samuel Ka-Ming Leung is a budding collaborative pianist and classical saxophonist from Hong Kong. He is returning to Aspen as an orchestral keyboard fellow. Leung began his doctoral degree in collaborative piano at the Eastman School of Music under the direction of Andrew Harley in fall 2024, with a graduate assistantship in studio accompanying and orchestral keyboard. He also completed his master’s degree at Eastman. He was one of the 2023 Bowdoin International Music Festival collaborative piano fellows, where he studied with Pei-Shan Lee. In May 2022 Leung obtained a master’s in classical saxophone performance at Eastman. Ka-Ming Leung is the recipient of a 2025 Anne and Chris Reyes Scholarship.