Cuarteto Latinoamericano, one of the world’s most renowned string quartets, will perform the narrated program “Mexico: A Musical Journey” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.

 

This is the seventh and final concert of the 2021-22 Friends of Good Music performance season.

 

The concert is being presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Frida Kahlo’s Garden,” which was produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities and is on view in the Quick Center’s Winifred Shortell Kenney Gallery until May 23.

 

Narration will be provided by guest lecturer Benjamin Juarez, professor of fine arts emeritus in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. Juarez will present a brief historical overview of the intersections between painting and music in Mexico, and the thematic and ideological relations between artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to composers.

 

Cuarteto Latinoamericano comprises three brothers, violinists Saul Briton and Aron Briton, and cellist Alvaro Briton, along with violist Javier Montiel. They have recorded more than 90 CDs, including nearly the entire Latin American repertoire for string quartet. 

 

Volume 6 of their Villa-Lobos cycle of 17 string quartets, on the Dorian label, was nominated for a Grammy and a Latin Grammy for Best Chamber Music Recording. Their albums “Brasileiro, Works of Mignone” (2012) and “El Hilo Invisible” (2016) won Latin Grammys for Best Classical Recording. They also won a 2009 Latin Grammy for Best New Latin Composition for their recording of Gabriela Lena Frank’s composition “Inca Dances,” which they recorded with guitarist Manuel Barrueco.

 

The quartet has also been awarded the prestigious Diapason d’Or, the Mexican Music Critics Association Award, and three Most Adventurous Programming awards from Chamber Music America/ASCAP.

 

Founded in Mexico in 1982, Cuarteto Latinoamericano has toured extensively throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, China, Japan and New Zealand. They have premiered more than 100 works written for them, and they continue to introduce new and neglected composers to the genre. 

 

This concert is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. 

 

Single ticket prices for this concert are $20 at full price, $16 for senior citizens and SBU employees, and $5 for students. For tickets and information, call The Quick Center at (716) 375-2494.

 

For each Friends of Good Music performance, The Quick Center will open its galleries one hour before the performance and keep them open throughout the intermission. Regular gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 

 

Museum admission is free and open to the public year-round. For more information, visit www.sbu.edu/quickcenter.

 

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. St. Bonaventure was named the #5 regional university value in the North in U.S. News and World Report’s 2022 college rankings edition.