Customer Reviews

Dancing in Colombia

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If you can listen to these beautiful pieces without beginning to bob, sway, and tap your foot, and do not find your mood lifting, then check for a pulse - you may be lacking one!

I recently heard this group perform at a concert at TTU in Cookeville, TN, and this CD brilliantly captures the group's outstanding precision, bouyancy, and interplay in an impeccable digital recording that has a very live and natural sound. You will not regret buying this CD (unless you fail the aforementioned pulse test)!

I have never heard a more ideal recording of turn-of-the-century dance pieces from Latin America. Whether you are a classical aficionado or a Latin music lover, you will find this disc stands up to repeated, and even repetitive, play.

From Colombia, with Amerindian, Afro-Colombian and Venezuelan influence, it is of an entirely different society than the early Cuban and Puerto Rican son genre, and, as arranged here, is instrumental and woodwind-based.

What is represented here are Afro-Colombian cumbia (the 'porro'), Afro-Venezuelan waltz (the 'pasillo'), circle dances (the 'torbellino' and the Angolan-Colombian 'bunde'), early vallenato (the 'paseo'), and a justly famous 12/8 dance whose provenance is the Mande culture of Mali (the 'bambuco').

Quintet of the Americas is one of those ensembles whose performances are fun, experimental, and perfectly fused, in the same way that Kronos or Quartetto Gelatto's have been.

Don't miss this!