Bassoonist Cornelia Sommer offers World Premiere of Rodriguez’ Mamá María

The award-winning, multifaceted scholar, published arranger, composer, and virtuoso bassoonist soon-to-be Dr. Cornelia Sommer will be offering her final doctoral recital New Enchantments: Fairy Tale Music for Bassoon on October 1st. The concert will not only be a wonderful display of Dr. Sommer’s musicianship but it will also be a one-in-a-lifetime historic event for bassoon music itself. Dr. Sommer will be presenting a program of exclusively new music for the bassoon that will include her own compositions, her arrangements of music by Rameau and Schumann, an commissioned works by composers Sato Matsui, Max Grafe, Chiel Meijering, and the world premiere of Rodríguez’s fairy tale in variations Mamá María for bassoon and piano.
The concert will take place at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in NYC on October 1st At 7:00pm EST. It will also be livestream.

About Mamá María

Commissioned by the bassoonist Cornelia L. Sommer for her doctoral project at The Juilliard School related to fairy tales and their presence in musical creation, Mamá María are a set of variations based on an original theme. These are organized to create a musical painting of María la Cruz, a fairy tale by the award-winning Puerto Rican author Carmen Leonor Rivera-Lassén. In María la Cruz, Rivera-Lassén describes how in a small town in Puerto Rico, where mothers and their children starved, María la Cruz lived in a cave near a river and cooked to feed the children and their mothers. Suddenly, everyone in the village was afflicted by a great disease that forced them to leave their homes. Before leaving, to protect their children, the mothers left them in the cave of María who would be able to feed them. As time passed, María had to rest in a sleep from which she would not be able to return. But first, worried about how the children could feed themselves as she would not be present, she decides to go with them to the river and rest with them there. By dawn, the children had become coquíes. María, before sleeping forever, turned them into coquíes so that they would not suffer or go hungry. From that moment onwards, on the banks of the river you can hear the singing of a chorus of coquíes.

Mamá María navigates the fairy tale of Rivera-Lassén through different variations that gradually transform from the mystical, the conflict, and the magic to reach the redemption of transformation. The piece aims to represent María’s last moments as she has to make the decision to leave the children safely and with sustenance before her eternal rest.