by Jarrett Hoffman

Guitarist Berta Rojas has made the music of Agustín Barrios Mangoré a focal point of her career, from her 2008 album Intimate Barrios to her four-year tour “In the Footsteps of Mangoré” with clarinetist and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera.

Rojas will make her Cleveland debut on Saturday, March 14 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in a concert presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. Her program highlights Barrios, a fellow Paraguayan who lived from 1885 to 1944.

The first half travels from Spain (Federico Moreno Torroba’s Sonatina) to Brazil (Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 4 and Étude No. 4) and England (Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina, Op. 52, No. 1). And the second half is all Barrios, including two of his Op. 8 Waltzes, the Estudio de Concierto, Las Abejas, Un Sueño en la Floresta, La Catedral, and an arrangement of his Danza Paraguaya in which Rojas will be joined by students of the Guitar Society.

Rojas’ first encounter with the works of that composer came when she was a young guitarist. “I heard the music of Barrios and I fell in love with it,” she said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]