Honors College House Concert Features 'Las Cuatro Estaciones del Latin Jazz'

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An international ensemble of musicians and composers will present Latin-jazz-inflected selections from Vivaldi's beloved Four Seasons concertos.

Join the U of A Honors College for Latin-jazz-inflected selections from Vivaldi's classical concertos The Four Seasons at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 1, in Gearhart Hall 130 as part of the Honors College House Concert series. 

The concert, presented in partnership with RefleXions Music Series, is free, open to all and will be followed by a reception. Please RSVP here, and come early to reserve a seat. Parking will be available in the Harmon Avenue Parking Garage.

A Musical Journey 

The concert will feature an ensemble of world-class musicians led by pianist and composer Pepe Rivero. A classically trained pianist fluent in jazz improvisation, Rivero has won acclaim for revisiting classical composers in arrangements such as “Los Boleros de Chopin” and “Beethoven en su Salsa.” Rivero will bring “Las Cuatro Estaciones del Latin Jazz” to the U of A along with Rubén Darío Reina (violin), Adi Meyerson (bass) and Fernando Valencia and Ivanna Cuesta (percussion).

“I like to imagine Vivaldi getting on a boat and coming to the Americas and rewriting the Four Seasons while he’s here,” Rivero said about the inspiration for the arrangement. 

“Think spring in Cuba, inflected by rumba and guajira; summer in Brazil, sampling samba, bossa nova and forró; fall in Buenos Aires, with some direct quotations from renowned Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’; and winter in New York City with music that speaks of extreme weather – very cold, pure jazz,” he added.

Rivero joked that he likes to “disarrange” through his arrangement projects, emphasizing that “I’ve never conceived music as two things, popular music and classical music — those divisions are not real in my mind. To me, there is just music.”

Timely Musical Fusion 

For violin soloist Rubén Darío Reina, this performance provides an opportunity to connect his early love of popular music with classical music and jazz. His interpretation of Vivaldi has evolved from a very precise reading of the score and fidelity to the instruments of Vivaldi’s time to a “fiesta, a real fiesta: my brain cells dance when I’m improvising.” This musical fusion is especially timely now, given the global pandemic and political unrest: “This isn’t only about music, it’s also about connecting people, using music as a tool to bring them together.” 

U of A music professor Fernando Valencia and drummer and composer Ivanna Cuesta will bring a new dimension, percussion, to Vivaldi’s strings. 

“For me this kind of performance can show to the people that there is no separation in music,” Cuesta said. “We as creatives and improvisers have a lot of challenges and opportunities to create new things or innovate without discrimination in music.”

The Honors College House Concerts series is held in the Honors Student Lounge in Gearhart Hall, a beautifully appointed room that provides a comfortable setting for these intimate concerts. This year’s “Las Cuatro Estaciones del Latin Jazz” is part of RefleXions Tertulia, a series of concerts, panel discussions and master classes to be offered when these musicians gather in Northwest Arkansas. An extended version of this concert will be performed at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, at Walton Arts Center’s Starr Theater. For more information visit reflexionsmusic.org.

About the Honors College: The University of Arkansas Honors College was established in 2002 and brings together high-achieving undergraduate students and the university’s top professors to share transformative learning experiences. Each year the Honors College awards up to 90 freshman fellowships that provide $80,000 over four years, and more than $1 million in undergraduate research and study abroad grants. The Honors College is nationally recognized for the high caliber of students it admits and graduates. Honors students enjoy small, in-depth classes, and programs are offered in all disciplines, tailored to students’ academic interests, with interdisciplinary collaborations encouraged. All Honors College graduates have engaged in mentored research.

About the Reflexions Music Series: The RefleXions Music Series is a celebration of music, musicians, advocates, and audiences; a space to foster creative justice and diversity through opportunities to reflect, learn, grow, change and teach. RefleXions Music Series propagates sound and messages; expresses the highest standards of music and artistic interpretation; reverses the dynamics of Eurocentric standards; carefully considers contexts, intersectionality, relationships and crossroads with other disciplines; and celebrates, represents and includes diverse identities. 

Additionally, the RefleXions team is a collective of Northwest Arkansas individuals from different backgrounds that bring unique perspectives and commitment to the highest standards of scholarship, research and aesthetic diversity in the arts: Erika Almenara, Rogelio Garcia-Contreras, Ronda Mains, Catalina Ortega, Miroslava Panayotova, Lia Uribe, Jessica Vansteenburg and Leigh Wood. 

RefleXions is also supported by the U of A’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Music, Honors College, the Arkansas Global Changemakers, the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education and KUAF 91.3 Pubic Radio, and has collaborated with art leaders from the Walton Arts Center, CACHE, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, IDEALS Institute, Northwest Arkansas Council and Might-T-By-Design. This year RefleXions is adding the Walton Arts Center and the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra as new community partners, and RefleXions Music Tertulia events are partially supported by an Artists 360 Community Activator Grant, the U of A Chancellor’s Grant for the Humanities and Performing Arts Initiative, and the Women’s Giving Circle Grant. 

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.