Venezuelan symphonic roots

Venezuelan Symphonic Roots is a DMA Recording Project that uses professional orchestral recording as a means of artistic advocacy, preservation, and public circulation for underrepresented Venezuelan symphonic works and broader Latin American orchestral repertoire. The project centers on three works by composers connected to Venezuela: Ángel Sauce’s Concierto para Violín y Orquesta, orchestrated by Juan Francisco Sans; Reinaldo Moya’s Terra Preta: Anthropogenic Amazon; and Claudia Calderón’s Suite Llanera. Together, these compositions present Venezuelan symphonic music not as a single national style, but as a broad artistic field shaped by institutional history, contemporary Latin American creation, Amazonian memory, and the living rhythmic traditions of the Venezuelan and Colombian plains.

The recording responds to a significant gap in the international circulation of Venezuelan orchestral music. Although Venezuela has a substantial symphonic tradition, many of its works remain difficult to access through commercial recordings, reliable scores, or sustained performance histories. By recording this repertoire with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc, violin soloist Simón Gollo, and Venezuelan guest artists Leonidas Rondón on cuatro and Manuel Rangel on maracas, the project helps move these works from limited availability into a more durable public archive for listeners, performers, conductors, and scholars.

Each work contributes a distinct perspective on Venezuelan musical identity. Ángel Sauce’s Concierto para Violín y Orquesta, based on his 1942 Sonata (Violín y Piano) and presented here in Juan Francisco Sans’s orchestral version finalized in 2022, provides a historical and patrimonial point of reference within the album, bringing forward a mid-twentieth-century Venezuelan voice shaped by institutional musical life, lyrical immediacy, and formal clarity. Reinaldo Moya’s Terra Preta expands the project toward the Amazon basin, using contemporary orchestral language and references to Latin American vernacular traditions—including capoeira, Calipso del Callao, and chicha—to address ecology, culture, and transnational Latin American identity. Claudia Calderón’s Suite Llanera brings joropo llanero directly into the project, transforming the rhythmic, harmonic, and formal logic of llanero music from the Venezuelan and Colombian plains into a large-scale symphonic language while foregrounding the voice of a major female composer.

Through performance, recording, and critical reflection, Venezuelan Symphonic Roots shows that documentation is not a neutral act. Recording can shape what is heard, remembered, programmed, and studied. This project therefore contributes to the visibility of Venezuelan symphonic repertoire and to broader conversations about Latin American orchestral music, cultural memory, and practice-based doctoral research.