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"In Cuba, the popular music is very active," she said. "When you walk on the streets, there is music all the time. And because it is so hot, the windows are always open. So I learned to play classical piano like that. With popular music all the time — even if you don't want it. So my style is a mixture of influences. It's just my own."
Pérez Velázquez, 44, fell in love with the piano when she was no taller than the piano bench, listening to her mother's afternoon ivory serenades. At age 14, she was selected to attend Havana's National School of Music by Cuban national talent-seekers. By her 18th birthday, she had already composed a handful of scores and developed dreams of attending a musical conservatory in the United States.
Now, 15 years after coming to America as one of the up-and-coming talents in Cuban composition, Pérez Velázquez will present the worldwide debut of her latest commissioned work tonight during the Aguavá New
"It's wonderful for a composer to get to hear her own music — to see something we have created take life," Pérez Velázquez said of the debut of her piece, "Like the subtle winds of love."
"And music is beautiful because it is not material," she added. "So the beauty of a composition is when it is performed, because for that time only, it is alive."
Thanks to Pérez Velázquez, Aguavá will be performing in Berkshire County for the first time. The Williams professor worked as an Indiana University graduate student for the studio's co-founder, Venezuelan-American conductor Carmen-Helena Téllez.
Aguavá, founded in 1996 by Téllez, American composer Cary Boyce and flutist/producer Alain Barker, is an artists' group dedicated to the production and presentation of recently created music. The name Aguavá refers to a medieval Spanish warning that has come to mean "look out."
After more than a decade of international tours, including performances in Columbia, Mexico and Israel, the group of 12 musicians has worked with more than 30 artists from around the world and received high critical praise.
Téllez, who spends much of her time training classical conductors in Indiana, said Aguavá aims to honor modern composition.
"We are devoted to the living composer," she said. "All of us love Western classical music, but we know that Western classical music is always renewing itself. So, we try to present the culture and times in different environments, and this concert is a showcase of culture as it relates to the subject of love."
Tonight's concert features 10 works by internationally recognized and contemporary composers such as George Crumb, Kaija Saariaho and Geoffrey Gordon. To accompany their melodies, the composers will provide the text from poetry that inspired his or her score.
Through a variety of instrumental styles, the composers express the many facets of love. From romantic to painful to maternal love, Téllez said the concert will ride a roller coaster of emotion.
"I believe that music actually happens in the mind of the listener," said the award-winning conductor. "Not on the stage — in the mind. Because the listener has his or her own interpretations and memories that go with the music."
As she listens to her piece performed tonight, Pérez Velázquez says she will be flooded with emotions. Memories of her Cuban roots, her days at Indiana and the love she felt at the birth of her 2-year-old son, Oliver. A mixture of feelings. That's her style.
"When I wrote this, I didn't want to just focus on the romantic aspects of love, but love in different aspects of life," she said. "And life is always changing. So as a composer, I wanted to try to capture that."
To reach Amy Carr: acarr@berkshireeagle.com, (413) 496-6233.
