A spicy mix of Latin, Spanish, Sephardic, Balkan and classical sounds will fill Rigas Theater at St. Bonaventure University’s Quick Center for the Arts when the quartet Fandango! takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 21. 

 

This is the eighth and last presentation in the 2022-2023 Friends of Good Music performance season. 

 

One of the most exciting groups on Chicago’s musical scene, Fandango! comprises four multiple award-winning virtuoso musicians who hail from Spain, France, Bosnia and Taiwan, and who have played separately and together on the world’s most prestigious stages.

 

The group made its Washington, D.C., debut at the illustrious Dumbarton Oaks series, appeared at Roosevelt University in Chicago, at the Bermuda International Festival, and has toured in nearly every region of the U.S. including Hawaii, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa and Colorado.

 

Fandango! takes its name from the passionate Spanish dance popular in Portugal and Latin America. One of the best-known Fandangos is the last movement of Boccherini’s Quintet for Guitar and Strings in D major, and it has become the ensemble’s signature piece.

 

The quartet will perform works by Luigi Boccherini, Manuel de Falla, Antonio Vivaldi, contemporary composers Carlos Rafael Rivera, Miroslav Tadic, and will end the program with Alan Thomas’ “Fantasy on Themes” from the opera “Carmen.” 

 

Spanish flutist Eugenia Moliner and Bosnian guitarist Denis Azabagic, founding members of the group, are a husband-and-wife team acclaimed worldwide as the Cavatina Duo. “If there is a finer flute and guitar duo in the world than Cavatina Duo, I have not heard them,” raved Soundboard Magazine.

 

The ensemble also includes French violinist Blaise Magnière, who was praised by Stage and Cinema for his “virtuosic skill,” and who studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England before attending the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein.

 

Completing the quartet is Taiwanese cellist Cheng-Hou Lee, who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School and his doctorate in musical art from the New England Conservatory. He won Taiwan’s National Cello Competition and the Manhattan School of Music Concerto Competition.

 

This performance 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 tickets are $20 at full price, $16 for senior citizens and St. Bonaventure 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.