Program Note

III. La tumba de Zapata (Zapata’s Grave)

Pequeña familia is an essay in composition-improvisation for clarinet and/or cello, with optional narrator(s) and/or electronics. It is the second piece of the trilogy I have been working on since 2022, Trilogía del dolor (Trilogy of Pain), and its theme is grief. I wrote the texts for this piece, both in Spanish and English myself. La tumba de Zapata is the third movement of Pequeña familia. The text tells the true story of my visit to Emiliano Zapata’s grave in Cuautla, Mexico, in the mid-2000s. Musically speaking, it features an original folk-sounding melody which is gradually transformed by the instrumentalists via improvisation. After a middle section featuring more abstract materials and even more open improvisatory strategies, the melody returns near the end, in a fragmented form. Pequeña familia was commissioned by Madison Greenstone and Rocío Díaz de Cossío, who will give the official world premiere later this year. I am thankful to Joshua Rubin and Peter Ko for this pre-premiere, for their amazing talent, and for their support of my music. [WT].