Mezzo-Soprano Dr. Rachel Day Velarde ‘94 returned to Smith on Feb. 19 to perform “Songs from Women of Pan America,” a recital featuring women composers from across North and South America, accompanied by Dr. Luis Rodriguez, a pianist and music educator at Grand Canyon University.
The program included art songs in English, Spanish, French and German from American composer Rosephanye Powell, Argentinian composer Irma Urteagua, Mexican composer María Grever, American composer Amy Beach, Canadian composer Martha Hill Duncan and Belize-born British composer Erollyn Wallen. The event had around 30 attendees.
“I think María Grever’s music is some of the closest to my heart,” Velarde said. “It’s the kind of music my grandfather played; he was a theater organist in Chicago. He started around the time she was writing music. But I really just enjoy singing a whole variety of music and finding what I can communicate to my audience.”
Rodriguez and Velarde have performed together on numerous occasions, collaborating as faculty at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. “She also performed at my church, and we often used to joke that I would kind of be her boss at the church and at Grand Canyon she would be my boss. We performed this recital a couple of years ago, and we have wanted to bring it to Smith College for quite some time,” Rodriguez said.
The pair were initially scheduled to perform at Smith in 2019, though the performance was postponed indefinitely due to Velarde’s vocal health issues and the rise of the pandemic.
This recital marks both the first time that Velarde has returned to Smith in a performance capacity, and perhaps the last time that Velarde and Rodriguez will share the stage.
“It was nice to be back after 29 years,” Velarde said, “Sweeney Hall Stage was where I had my first full solo recital.”
Rodriguez said, “I hope that we have other opportunities in the future to share diverse options of repertoire and maybe even share the stage again with Dr. Velarde — that would be nice. But if not, I can’t wait to see all she does and I am open to do so with other performers.”
Despite her work being well-received publicly, Velarde described receiving pushback for her repertoire choices from certain music departments. She stated that at one job interview, “They told me ‘we had a really hard time finding a pianist that was willing to play your music,’ even though nothing I did was outside of stylistic norm; it was music they just were not familiar with. But I thought even if you offer me the job, I don’t want to work here.”
“I want to encourage my students to explore repertoire that’s not the standard. Yes, do the standard repertoire, but let’s go beyond it, let’s really branch out and find some interesting stuff.” She explained, “some music departments are very traditional in a 1950s kind of way. But the one where I landed is extremely supportive of everything I do and it’s exactly where I needed to be.”
Rodriguez, a composer himself, said, “this repertoire is not as common in the classical world, but deserves to have the same attention from the audience — women composer’s works and works from Latin America.”
