Copyright The Boston Globe
Late fall may be quickly descending, but Vanessa Calderón-Rosado has a suggestion for anyone who might be feeling the seasonal blues: go to Symphony Hall on the evening of Nov. 14, when the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (OSPR) will make its Boston debut with an evening of music celebrating its island home. “Everyone who goes to the concert — Puerto Rican, not Puerto Rican, whoever you are — you’re going to come out feeling like you’re walking through the streets of Old San Juan,” said Calderón-Rosado, the chief executive officer of the South End-based community development corporation Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), which is presenting the concert in collaboration with the BSO. For Calderón-Rosado, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and often attended the orchestra’s concerts as a child, this visit feels momentous. “I think the Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico is one of the best orchestras in the Americas,” she said. The OSPR was founded in 1958 by cellist Pablo Casals, who was born in Spain to a Puerto Rican mother and spent much time on the island in the final decades of his life. There, he also established the annual Casals Festival, which continues to attract world-famous classical musicians and ensembles every year, and the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Advertisement Though the OSPR mostly plays European symphonic repertoire at home, “the breadth of what they really perform and present is quite diverse,” said Calderón-Rosado. “I wanted to expose Boston audiences to the richness of classical music that is composed in our countries — Puerto Rico, and the rest of Latin America.” Because of its strong connections to Spain, the United States, and the rest of Latin America, Puerto Rico is a “magnet” for “developing musical culture,” said OSPR music director Maximiano Valdés, who was born in Chile and has lived primarily in San Juan since taking the job some 18 years ago. But by dint of Puerto Rico being an island, outsiders “don’t know much about what goes on” there in concert music. “The amount of popular music that comes out of Puerto Rico is so overwhelming, that what happens here in terms of classical music composition is unknown.” Advertisement With that in mind, Valdés curated a program that incorporated music by established composers such as Ernesto Cordero Descarga and Roberto Sierra — whose Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra the BSO is coincidentally playing on this weekend’s program — as well as younger composers envisioning the island while working abroad. These include Paris-based Luis Quintana, and New York-based Angélica Negrón, who recently contributed arrangements to Catalan singer Rosalía’s ambitious symphonic pop album “LUX.” Finally, the concert will also feature orchestrated folk pieces and Puerto Rican Christmas music. “In Puerto Rico, Christmas begins to be celebrated more or less in late September,” Valdés explained. “So really, we have to make sure that they do have that.” Folk music is a crucial component of the orchestra’s repertoire year-round, Valdés said. “This is a very musical country, and very musical people. Puerto Ricans live for music, and the relationship with their native music is very strong.” After Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on the island in 2017, killing almost 3,000 people and destroying much of the island’s infrastructure, the OSPR traveled to isolated mountain towns, sometimes with great difficulty, to comfort people with “music that they knew,” Valdés said. In the Puerto Rican and greater Latin American diaspora that IBA serves, people are also excited to hear the music they know, said Calderón-Rosado. “We had a community meeting, and some of them were talking, ‘I have to figure out what I’m going to wear!’” IBA was founded in the 1960s to fight the large-scale displacement of the Puerto Rican community from the South End, and its efforts eventually resulted in the development of the Villa Victoria affordable housing complex. Though the organization’s arts programming has been without a home since the 2020 demolition of the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, the organization is currently approaching completion of La CASA: The Center for Arts, Self-determination, and Activism, a 26,000-square-foot, four-story venue that will house IBA’s arts programs and offices as well as serve as a Latino cultural hub. Advertisement “We integrate the arts in all the work that we do. And we not only promote Latino arts and artists, but use the arts to build community,” Calderón-Rosado said. Unfortunately, she said, symphony orchestras and halls are often associated with the kind of wealth and privilege that can keep lower-income listeners out. She had long wanted to bring the OSPR to Boston and had bounced the idea around a few times in the past. But the wheels didn’t start moving until she proposed it to BSO president and CEO Chad Smith. “He loved it. I think he gets it,” she said. And now, “people are really, truly excited to welcome La Sinfónica, and, for many of them, to walk for the first time through the Symphony Hall doors,” she said. “How wonderful that is.” PUERTO RICO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall. Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m. 617-266-1200, www.bso.org A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.
