Great Barrington — Alturas Duo will appear at the Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock on Sunday, September 15, as part of the South Berkshire Concert Series and National Hispanic Heritage Month and will include the premiere performance of “Look In,” a piece composed by Simon’s Rock music faculty member John Myers.
Alturas Duo comprises two musicians: classically trained violist and charango player Carlos Boltes and guitarist Scott Hill. As a duo, they play two different kinds of chamber music: the kind from the gilded salons of Vienna that we call “classical” and the kind from Latin America that is based on folk tradition and dried armadillos (what charangos are made of). They also play newly commissioned works from people like John Myers of Great Barrington. In fact, their interest in new music has led Boltes and Hill to engage with such artists and ensembles as guitarist and composer Horacio Salinas, charango virtuoso Ernesto Cavour, Argentine bandoneón legend and Piazzolla bandmate Daniel Binelli, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Callisto Quartet, Voce Choir, the Washington Choral Arts Society, the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, and East Coast Contemporary Ballet. The two are responsible for more than 60 additions to the guitar-plus-viola-or-charango repertoire in chamber music settings, as well as choral and orchestral works.
Collaborators include composers Leo Brouwer, Ronald Pearl, David Macbride, and Raimundo Penaforte. But two of the most significant works the Duo has commissioned and premiered are Javier Farías’ “Oceana,” for guitar, viola, charango, and mixed chorus, and “El Vuelo de tu Alma,” for guitar and charango, or string orchestra.
The Alturas Duo has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Central and South America. Mr. Boltes has served as principal violist of the Orquesta de Cámara del Teatro Municipal de Santiago and Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, and Hill has performed with orchestras, choirs, instrumentalists, and vocalists throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe, and South America as a soloist and chamber musician. The Duo has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, the Smithsonian Institute, the Asolo Theater, Le Petit Trianon, La Maison de Mai, and Music Mountain in Connecticut.
Mr. Hill is a Suzuki-qualified guitar instructor and earned an honors bachelor of arts degree in music from Lakehead University and a master’s degree in guitar performance and a graduate professional diploma in chamber performance from the Hartt School of Music. Mr. Boltes teaches privately and is on the faculty of the Mancera Festival in Valdivia, Chile.
Alturas Duo has recorded for the Brioso, Con Brio, and Ravello Records labels. And for Naxos they collaborated with Joseph Holt and the Choral Arts Society of Washington on release of an award-winning collection of works by Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez, including his well-known “Misa Criolla.”
According to semi-reliable sources, dried armadillos are no longer the preferred building material for the back section of the charango, an Andean instrument of the lute family.
Hear Duo Alturas at the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Simon’s Rock on Sunday, September 15, 3 p.m., as part of the South Berkshire Concert Series and National Hispanic Heritage Month. Admission is free.
