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Cloudburst en Ciudad de México

April 7, 2009 at 4:30 pm UTC

And it comes full circle…

The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico’s largest university, is arguably the most prestigious school in Latin and South America. It’s also the school that Octavio Paz, my all-time favorite non-living poet, attended as a student of law before abandoning his studies. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

I’ve set several of his poems in the original Spanish or in translation (Water Night, A Boy and a Girl, Little Birds), but it was Cloudburst that was my very first ‘collaboration’ with him, and because it was my first it still holds a very special and sentimental place in my heart.

So imagine my delight to find this video: the premiere chorus at UNAM, “Staccatto,” performing Cloudburst. So beautiful. And watching their faces as they sing, it seems to me that they understand the poetry on a much deeper level than I ever could.

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