Ascenso

Album review

Santiago Cañón-Valencia is a rising young cellist who made his debut at age six with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá. He has made several albums, but he takes a step forward here with a recording on the Sono Luminus label, known for its classy audiophile catalog. Here, Sono Luminus departs from its usual studio haunts for the Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, Ohio, creating a contemplative mood while avoiding the hazards of murky church acoustics. Props are due to producer Elaine Martone, who earned a 2023 Grammy Award nomination for Best Classical Producer. Cañón-Valencia's program is all for solo cello, all Hispanic, all programmatic, and, with the exception of a cello arrangement of a piece from the Suite Española for piano, Op. 47, of Albéniz, all contemporary and either brand new or little-known. The programmatic aspect is what holds the listener's interest through 42 minutes of cello music. Sample the opening La ruta de la mariposa ("The Route of the Butterfly") of composer Damián Ponce de León, which, the composer says, has diverse sources of inspiration: "a conversation about the complex features of the flight of butterflies with Colombian dancer Federico Restrepo, the murder of an environmentalist leader who devoted his life to the protection of the Monarch butterflies in Mexico, and the appearance of a benign cyst in my thyroid gland that led me to discover the fact that the thyroid has the shape of a butterfly." The Urban Rhapsody of Leonardo Federico Hoyos is a portrait of Bogotà, Colombia. Cañón-Valencia's own Ascenso Hacia lo Profundo is likewise marked by strong musical contrasts, as the title suggests. This is an intriguing release that will acquaint listeners outside Latin American circles with new ideas in the music of the region.

© James Manheim /TiVo