Cine Bacco Concert Series:The Torres & Wellmann Quartet, Live and Up Close. A unique musical event this Friday 6th

By Carolyn Studer

“Trial by fire.” That’s how violinist Alexa Torres, the first woman and first violinist to graduate from the University of North Texas’s Jazz Strings Program, describes the bebop class where she first met guitarist Mario Wellmann. “You had to play specific musical devices in all 12 keys,” she said. “Random keys would flash up on a screen and you had to improvise in them. The fact that the keys weren’t tonally related made it harder.”

After the exam, they went out to celebrate, and soon they were getting together to play. They are still performing, and learning, together. Asked what drew them to each other musically, Alexa pointed to Mario’s unusual chord voicings, which “made me have to listen more.” Mario named Alexa’s warm tone. “You don’t always hear that in a violinist, and you don’t often see a violinist playing modern jazz,” he said. “She could play patterns and bebop phrases, and she could play outside.” Playing “outside” means deliberately venturing beyond a song’s expected harmony. He was intrigued.

Based in New York, where Alexa is pursuing a PhD in jazz performance at New York University and Mario a PhD in music theory at Columbia University, they perform modern jazz grounded in bebop and compose music that reflects their own roots in Latin America: Mario’s in Chile, Alexa’s in Cuba. Mario’s album Ecos del Sur, about the landscapes and musical traditions of southern Chile, comes out in December. Alexa begins recording her album Reconstruction next June. It explores three stories of rebuilding and displacement: Chile’s democratic reconstruction after Pinochet, the rebuilding of her childhood community in North Carolina after Hurricane Floyd, and her grandmother’s experience as a Cuban refugee.

Asked why he wanted to bring them to San Miguel, series producer Papacho Sirdey pointed to the rarity of a violinist fluent in bebop. The combination of violin, guitar, bass, and drums is unusual today, he said, and reminiscent of early New Orleans jazz. The quartet, he added, brings something fresh, combining the vocabulary of modern jazz with the rhythms, harmonies, and phrasing of bebop.

On November 6^th, Mario, who is also a neuroscientist, will lead a master class on the best techniques for learning music. The class is designed for musicians but open to everyone, because the techniques apply to all learning, at any age.

Learning begins with encoding: connecting new information with something we already know. If you know the chord progression of “Darn That Dream” and recognize something similar in a new song, you’re encoding. Consolidation is the process through which newly acquired information becomes more stable and can be retained as a long-term memory. Mario’s contemplative piece “Consolidation” describes this process in the language of jazz. Papacho, a teacher himself, uses many of the same techniques. “I can relate to many of these concepts,” he said, citing the value of “selfexplanation.”

“When you teach, you have to explain a concept to someone, and that gives you a clearer idea of what you are doing. Ifyou can’t explain it, something is not well understood.” At the concert, Alexa and Mario will be joined by Mexican bassist Ricardo Urbina and drummer Isaac Villagómez. They will hear violin and guitar together, live, something Mario says is special.

But they won’t hear duplicates of the recordings. “When you’re recording, you want to avoid mistakes, but in a live concert, you take more risks,” he said. “You’re given the freedom to say, ‘I’m going to take this path and see what happens.’”

Friday, November 6^th, shows at 5:00 and 7:00 p.m.

Cine Bacco, Hernández Macías 59

Admission: $600 mxn

Reservations: WhatsApp 415 133 5190

Cine Bacco Master Class

Powered by PapachoMusic

Neuroscience-Based Practice and Techniques for Musicians with Mario Wellmann

Topics:

• Strengthening memory through active recall

• Deepening understanding and identifying gaps through selfexplanation

• Setting goals and directing attention in practice

Credentials: BA in speech-language pathology; BM in jazz studies; MSc in neuroscience; MPhil in music; PhD candidate in music theory, including how we learn

Friday, November 6^th

11:30 a.m. Cine Bacco Hernández Macías 59

Master class: $300 mxn

Only 25 seats. Reservations: WhatsApp 415 133 5190