DSO’s CUBE Digital Series Kicks Off With Almazan This Saturday

This Saturday, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) kicks off its new CUBE | Digital series with Fabian Almazan and his ensemble joined by a DSO String Quartet. The program will be streamed on November 21 at 7:00 p.m. ET exclusively on dso.org.

Cuban-born jazz pianist and composer Fabian Almazan and his ensemble join forces with a DSO String Quartet to perform Almazan’s composition Alcanza, a vibrant multi-movement suite that fuses jazz and contemporary classical chamber music. Almazan’s band recordings from Perth, Australia, blend with DSO String Quartet recordings from the Peter D. and Julie F. Cummings Cube (The Cube) in Detroit in this celebration of making music together while being physically apart.

Of the piece, Almazan says, “Alcanza (Spanish for “Reach”) is a nine-movement suite of music that deals with those brief moments in our lives in which within a blink of an eye, everything changes—or at least gives us a remarkable new perception of our condition. It also deals with the process of finding our own path as we go from childhood into adulthood; reflecting the beauty, frustrations, and paradoxes of modern-day life and not giving up on reaching for everything in life that brings us joy and love.”

Almazan will be joined by Jo Lawry (voice), Linda Oh (bass), and Ben Vanderwal (drums). The DSO String Quartet is comprised of Hai-Xin Wu (violin), Rachel Klaus (violin), Han Zheng (viola), and Peter McCaffrey (cello).