A Tribute to Navarro and His Fine Performers

a note from our website visitor:

I've just watched and listened to the film of Oscar Navarro's piano trio, and was thrilled by the work and the performance. Thank you for making this exciting work accessible to a wider audience.As a tribute to Navarro and his fine performers, I'm enclosing below a poem I wrote after another wonderful chamber music concert I attended. Viva Classical Underground!

Judith Searle
http://www.judithsearle.com/

IN THE TEETH OF TIME

Music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
--T.S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages"

The violinist is dying, the pianist is dying, all of us
in this high-ceilinged room on our chairs are dying.
The roses in the sunlight streaming through the windows
are dying, though their scent is strong.

Outside a dog howls as the violin pours forth
its intricate filigree, its amazing leaps and moans.
Poor howling dog, howling for all of us sitting here
on this Sunday afternoon in the teeth of time.

We are forever brothers and sisters,
held together in this womb, birthed
through the throes of the music into the sunlight.
We howl with pain and joy.

This musk of mortality mixes with the fragrance of the roses.
The moans and sobs of the violin are indistinguishable
from the blood leaping in our veins on this
Sunday afternoon in the kingdom of forever.

The cutting edge of time is essential to the ecstasy.
The performers are our high priests, flinging themselves
into the silence to bring back treasures for the tribe,
which we devour in this ritual communion.

We ride their backs as if on dolphins,
soaring into the sunlight scattering diamonds,
plunging through the depths, lungs bursting,
our exuberance edged with panic.

In this moment of alchemy, discipline is inseparable from freedom,
fierceness from tenderness, focus from abandonment.
The music is a lover with a hundred hands, and we are reeling
with the sudden touch of sound after a moment of silence.

Worth it to be mortal on a day like this,
with the sunlight, the roses,
the music rising to heaven, swooping back
to earth, our vehicle to eternity.

--Judith Searle
from her book IN THE TEETH OF TIME

World premiere of Oscar Navarro piano trio performed at Classical Underground is now on YouTube

On April 20, 2009 concert, no one knew in the audience that the piano trio they just heard and liked so much was a world-premier performance. The announcement was very simple: Oscar Navarro piano trio performed by Regulo Martinez, Sergio Gamez and Joo Lee. People were wondering about the name for a moment, but were immediately grabbed by the music from the first note...

No one knew the composer was right there amoung us in the audience. Even when he stepped up to the "stage" for a moment, to thank demurely the wildly cheering audience, many still didn't quite realize what just happened.

That was Oscar Navarro, a young Spanish composer and musician, finishing his studies in LA.

"This trio " Things of Destiny " is a present for my Girlfriend Noelia Belijar. I wrote it thinking in the music that she loves, long melodies, colourful harmonies, and rithmic parts" ... - says Oscar Navarro. -

"The trio was writen for the Benefit Gala " Spanish Culture Figthing against Cancer " organized by the Spanish Coucelor D. Inocencio Arias.

The musicians are really amazing, both are my friends and I knew them at the University USC. Very talented people and passionate."

Regulo Martinez (piano), Sergio Gamez (violin), Joo Lee (cello).

World premiere of a new piano trio by composer Oscar Navarro, performed in Los Angeles at Classical Underground on 4/20/09 filmed and edited by our Classical Underground operative and video wizz Julie Resh with the help of Vladimir Kulgeyko.





Composer Oscar Navarro discusses the premiere of his Piano Trio with Alexey Steele.


by Olga Vlasova, Classical Underground