Minnesota Orchestra: Gabriela Montero's Piano Concerto No. 1, "Latin"

Venezuelan-born Gabriela Montero’s Latin Piano Concerto-performed this week with the composer as soloist-merges the European classical concerto form with idioms, traditions and characteristics of her native continent. Montero notes that her concerto reflects South America’s complexities and contradictions, from an opening Mambo that includes surface celebrations and elements of disruption, to a closing movement that cites the Venezuelan pajarillo dance, interrupted by reminders of forces that “hold our continent hostage to tyranny in its multiple guises.”