b.1960
Performance Dates
01.12.06 - 7:00PM
01.12.06 - 7:00PM
01.12.06 - 7:00PM
As our world continues growing smaller and more interconnected, classical music is increasingly enriched by traditions outside its European origins. The music of Osvaldo Golijov represents that enriching mixture of cultures in miniature. Born in Argentina of eastern European Jewish parents, he studied music in Argentina, Israel, and the United States before becoming a teacher and composer based in Massachusetts. His compositions resound with the raw “street voices” of South American popular music, mixed with echoes of klezmer and Latin percussion. As he told an interviewer, “Let’s say a tune is pentatonic, or in some [unusual] kind of scale. It’s not about that, it’s about how the voice utters that tune. I mean, what happens to the throat when singing that tune – that’s more important than the note, than the pitches.” Golijov first came to wide popularity with the phenomenal success of his Passion According to St. Mark, its text treated similarly to those of the Bach passions but using Brazilian and African musical idioms and vocalists. (The ASO will present this work’s Atlanta premiere at Emory University in February.) Robert Spano conducted its American premiere at Tanglewood, where he and Golijov met, and two years ago he conducted the world premiere of the composer’s first opera, Ainadamar.
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Osvaldo Golijov 
