Celebrating music from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula

The School of Music’s piano department, in association with the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies program, is staging “Carnival: Celebrating Music from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula” on Saturday, March 3 at noon in Morphy Recital Hall.

The concert is free and a Latin American themed reception for musicians and audience will follow the event. The concert is expected to last three hours, and audience members are invited to drop in at any time.

Carnival’s mission is to celebrate the diversity of musical cultures too often neglected in concert programming and academic study in the United States.

More than 30 student performers will present music by 20 composers from Argentina, Brazil, Catalonia, Cuba, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Venezuela and more. Composers featured range from well-known figures like Astor Piazzolla and Enrique Granados to lesser-known names like Xavier Montsalvatge, Tania Leon and Alicia Terzian.

Pieces for solo piano will be featured along with music for voice and piano, flute and piano, four hands and piano, eight hands.. An international roster of undergraduate and graduate students of the school’s acclaimed piano faculty will perform.

Piano faculty members represented are Martha Fischer, Jessica Johnson, Christopher Taylor and Todd Welbourne. In addition, Christina Baker, a scholar on salsa dance forms from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, will give a brief presentation on salsa in Mexico City at approximately 1 p.m.

Morphy Hall is located in the Mosse Humanities Building on the UW–Madison campus, at the corner of Park Street and University Avenue.