Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra – E. Berrido, "Danza Ritual" (2018)

Octavio Más-Arocas, conductor
Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra
Performed at the Ithaca College Ford Hall, April 7th, 2019 – Ithaca, NY.

Program Note:

At the time I wrote DANZA RITUAL I was about to attend a festival where the centerpiece of the orchestral gala was going to be Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which is also about both a ritual and dance. It was a cool exercise for me to think about how these two ideas could also come into existence within my music, and also in which way I wanted to bring about something that felt like it was Dominican, and therefore closer to the things that make me, me.

And so during the soul-searching process I went through before composing DANZA RITUAL I decided on two narrative elements, which –hopefully– will guide the experience of this piece a bit: The beginning and ending sections of this overture reflect my need to get closer to Dominican culture in my output, and the music heard on these sections is inspired by Afro-Caribbean religious manifestations from the Dominican Republic, where dance and mysticism are also patent. These manifestations, like the "música de Palos” heard in villages and sugar cane fields throughout the country are very rhythmic, and oftentimes loud with distinct melodic lines often sung or played in homophony — they also make use of various types of drums and the metal güira. So the materials I borrowed from these manifestations are driving rhythms, dance-like spirit, loudness, and use of very particular percussion instruments (the güira IS that one element that makes it more Dominican!). The middle section, which is the larger chunk of the piece, is inspired by the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, namely the sacrifice of Isaac, which is one of the earlier histories about “sacrifice” that I ever heard.

So, throughout the narrative of this short piece, I aim to depict these two ideas (dance and sacrifice) from different perspectives, and the spirit of the sections of the work are to show for this.