Dos Tangos Para Mi Abuelo (2020)
Instrumentation: piano, cello, and mezzo-soprano
Duration: ~7:30
Commissioned by the American Chamber Ensemble
Premiered on March 8, 2020
Program Notes:
This work is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Luis Vicente Maldonado Vera. My grandfather was a great man. He was kind and caring, with a strong moral compass. He was passionate about, and dedicated to, baseball. He trained his way to become a first baseman on the Ecuadorian national baseball team. In 1961, the Ecuadorian national team won the South American Championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with my grandfather as their captain. Although he retired as a baseball player shortly after the win in Argentina, he then founded La Liga Infantil de la Federación Deportiva del Guayas, in Miraflores in 1964. This was the little league of the Guayas Sports Federation. It has only continued to flourish since then and has become a cradle of Ecuadorian baseball. I trained there and played a few games as a kid, which are cherished memories for me.
The only thing that surpassed my grandfather’s love for baseball, was his passion and love for his family. Those family values have made their way through my father to me and my brother and sister. I wanted to honor him by writing two songs dedicated to him in his favorite genre of music, the tango. Listening to him sing and play his favorite tangos on the accordion is one of the reasons I have an affinity to the genre myself. The first movement is called “Mi Viejo Querido” (“My Dear Old Man”), with text by my father. This is a way of my father speaking to him and talking about all that he is grateful for that my grandfather did and taught him. For the second movement, I used the text of Pablo Neruda’s Evening Sonnet LXXXIX, from his Cien Sonetos de Amor. When I read the text by Pablo Neruda, I felt like it was my grandfather speaking to my family.
Article on my grandfather: https://www.eluniverso.com/deportes/2016/04/16/nota/5527230/vicente-maldonado-apasionado-beisbol-guayaquil-ha-fallecido/