Tucson Symphony series focuses on Gomez’s native Venezuela

For the first time in his 10-year tenure leading the orchestra, Gomez has programmed an all-Venezuelan concert, from guest musicians Jorge Glem and Elvis Martínez to a trio of popular Venezuelan composers.

“This hits home and hits home with a home run for sure,” the Spain-born, Venezuela-raised Gomez said about “Latin Sizzle.”

The concert is the third installment of the TSO’s inaugural October-long ¡Fiesta latina!, a four-concert series that culminates Nov. 1 with the orchestra’s special “Día de los Muertos” concert at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

¡Fiesta latina! is part of the orchestra’s ¡Celebración latina! initiative launched after the pandemic as a way to “expand the repertoire of the orchestra towards Hispanic representation throughout the whole season,” Gomez said.

“That meant adding repertoire (and artists) in all sorts of programs,” he explained.

¡Fiesta latina! enhances that with a monthlong festival of sorts that “showcases a lot of the elements of the Hispanic heritage thematically.”

“So artists, repertoire in all sorts of setups like Día de los Muertos,” Gomez explained.

The series kicked off Oct. 10 with Spanish guitarist Rafael Aguirre performing Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Violinist Jesús Linárez, who was TSO concertmaster for one season before leaving last summer, joined several of his former TSO colleagues last weekend for an Up Close chamber concert that showcased composers from Uruguay and Argentina.

The first half of “Latin Sizzle” features folk-leaning works by Venezuelan composers including Gonzalo Grau’s “Odisea: Concerto for Venezuelan Cuatro and Orchestra” that Glem recorded with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.

Gomez called the Latin Grammy-winning Glem “an important figure of Venezuelan culture” as the ambassador of the country’s definitive cuatro venezolano, which looks like a small guitar or large ukulele.

The four-stringed cuatro creates a bright, crisp sound that rests somewhere between a guitar and ukulele — higher than a guitar, lower than a uke, with a warm, resonant midrange.

“It is very complex because it is used to define all those very complex rhythms that we have in Venezuela,” Gomez said, noting the iconic joropo, the fast-paced waltz-like dance anchored by the cuatro.

Martínez will be playing bass and the bajo, the Mexican guitar that’s ubiquitous in regional Mexican, Norteño and Tejano music.

The program also includes Inocente Carreño’s “Margariteña,” an ode to the composer’s birthplace on Venezuela’s Margarita Island; and Aldemaro Romero’s “Fuga con Pajarillo.”

The concert is anchored by Finnish composer Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5.

“The aim is obviously to showcase our Hispanic heritage with this kind of thematics,” Gomez explained. “But then my intention is very purposeful to say that we are not that far away when it comes to all the music that we're familiar with in the orchestral repertoire.”

Programming Sibelius’ Fifth is part of Gomez’s goal to perform the full cycle of the composer’s seven symphonies. But he doesn’t want to simply box the works in on concerts with other Nordic composers “or in a typical program that has only repertoire for symphonic orchestra.”

“What if we use the power and the energy of folk music from Venezuela and connect it with that same thematic that we have with Sibelius, especially Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, which depicts Finlandia,” mused Gomez, who grew up listening to Sibelius and Shostakovich alongside Venezuelan waltzes and folk tunes. ”I thought that this was this opportunity to unite the two worlds of folk music in one concert instead of just separating them.”

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $21.05 to $115.48 through tucsonsymphony.org.