Sylvia Rexach Project: Olas y Arenas

Hello! My name is Sharon Riley Rexach. I am the daughter of Sylvia Rexach. I want to first of all thank Dr. José Cruz for his initiative in bringing together such a talented group of artists for this musical project and I am happy that you have managed to discover Sylvia and that today, November 23, you honor her with this concert. I congratulate Ángela Cervantes, Pepe Rivero, Reinier Elizarde, Michael Olivera and Ariel Bringuez. I know that to sing Sylvia is to discover a new world where her melodies and lyrics transport us to a place of bohemia and romance as only Sylvia knows how to do it. Much success on your premiere and know that today Sylvia listens to you with the swaying of her Olas y Arenas.

It was with those words of congratulation, gratefulness, and encouragement that the maiden concert of the new Jazz/Latino production of the music of Sylvia Rexach opened at Teatro Bellas Artes in Madrid on November 23, 2021. Before a note was played the audience erupted in an enthusiastic burst of applause to the message delivered remotely by Sharon Riley, immediately making the concert a deeply felt communal experience. Sharon lives in Florida, USA but she was in Madrid in spirit that night as was Sylvia, her ethereal presence floating in the blue lights of the theatre, and her voice transformed from bodyless mist into a vibratory presence channeled into being by the grace of Pepe Rivero and Ángela Cervantes.

The day before the concert Ángela started coming down with a cold; the day of the concert, the wife of Reinier "El Negrón" Elizardi went into labor and he had to rush her to the hospital. Just hours before the show, a frantic operation was unleashed to find a piano that would fit through the doors of the theatre because the original piano sent by the rental company was too big. Stagehands had to be found in a rush to put the replacement piano in place instead of using a mechanical lift, making the feat more complex and more delicate. 

The public was never the wiser about most of these last minute adversities that for a team less professional and less gifted would have proven fatal. Rivero's worry about performing with a keyboard instead of a proper piano dissolved into nothing. Ángela sang her heart out with technical perfection and deep sentiment. Pablo Martín Caminero, Negrón's replacement, came, read the charts, and just with the benefit of a sound check, played as if he had being doing it forever. A musician friend later wrote to me: "He played flawlessly, he is a monster."

When I told Sharon about Ángela's condition, she said that for a singer who knows what she is doing a cold is not necessarily a fatal handicap. As a singer herself, she should know. She shared how once during a show in Puerto Rico she was so sick that she would sing a song, go backstage to throw up, and then go back on stage and sing the next song. "The audience never knew what was happening to me," she said. Ángela's condition was not nearly as bad but I was alarmed when I heard her over the phone the day before the concert because her voice was hoarse. On November 23, no one had the slightest clue that there was anything wrong with her. To the contrary, according to one participant, her interpretations were heartful and emotive, full of filin, and her vocal solo in "Alma adentro," was "simply out of this world." All the musicians played brilliantly, which is their trademark.

After the performance, two of my friends who attended the concert wrote to me bursting with enthusiasm. One of them was a donor and was supposed to pick up the copies of the CD that were coming to him for his donation but he left without them because the line at the CD table was too long and he could not wait. "The crowd was very enthusiastic," he wrote to me, adding: "This is a very good sign. The concert was excellent. Congratulations!" My other friend brought someone with her and both were fascinated by the performance. Her Whatsapp message said: "The concert was outstanding, great musicians and artists. I thought it was fantastic and my friend was mesmerized as well." According to Lio Villahermosa, a musician and Rexach devotee from Puerto Rico, the concert was "a splurge of beauty. The music was impeccably creative."

The night of November 23 at Teatro Bellas Artes was one of difficulties, unexpected mishaps, excellence, and magic. Sylvia Rexach once wrote that "music lives in the breeze, in the sea, in nature, in the rivers, trembling in the swaying of the leaves, on the radios, in the clubs, in the juke boxes [...]. Performers die and are buried, but the music remains for other performers to be born and the songs to be sung again...." Her music is indeed alive and in the arrangements of Pepe Rivero and the voice of Ángela Cervantes it was beautifully rendered into the universal language of Latin jazz... with lots of filin as a bonus. This is, above all, what the night of November 23 at Bellas Artes in Madrid was all about.

—José E. Cruz