SEASONS
The opening 2019-2020 season El México romántico included five concerts taking place, of all places, at the Czech Center Museum. The season presented music by Manuel M. Ponce including piano works, his first Piano Trio, his Cello Sonata, several canciones and a Violin Sonata.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, a Virtual Season was launched in the spring of 2021. It featured artists across the USA that went through many difficulties to professionally record memorable recitals that included Ponce’s Cello Sonata, Piazzolla’s Le Gran Tango for violin & piano, Latinoamerican piano music and canciones. The recorded concerts were viewed by thousands of people across the USA and Mexico.
The third season 2022-2023 Beyond Europe presented four programs that included Axiom String Quartet performing Ponce’s piano trio and José Rolón’s piano quartet. Tenor Jorge Garza, mezzo Luisana Rivas, and Soprano Yuri Saenz presented a program of entirely women composers from Latinoamerica with Charbel Yubaile at the piano.
The fourth season 2023-2024 Latinoamérica Bella presented six concerts that included Apollo Chamber Players & mezzo Luisana Rivas performing canciones by Ponce for voice and strings. Internationally acclaimed guitarist Bokyung Byun performed a full program of Ponce’s music and composer J.E. Hernández presented his latest composition Desert Shelter in collaboration with dance company NobleMotion at the Wortham Center.
The fifth season in 2024 presented a most ambitious and far-reaching project: PONCE 243: complete works for piano. It consisted of 17 solo recitals plus 1 with orchestra, featuring 22 pianists from different nationalities and generations in coordination with 13 institutions. It presented for the first time the complete compositions for piano by Ponce in the most important venues of Houston and Mexico City. One key aspect of PONCE 243 was the preparation from manuscripts of all 243 works for piano by Ponce.
Starting with the sixth season Latinoamérica Viva! 2025 the season will be programmed in late September. The 2025 season included internationally acclaim classical guitarist Pablo Garibay, some of the best local pianists –Rodolfo Morales, Diego Caetano, Andrea Benabent, Xuefei Liu, mezzos Sarah Dyer and Luisana Rivas, and a selection of young winners from the Ponce Project International Piano Competition 2025.