Play Picasso’s “Girl with a Mandolin.”
Improvise the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Pathétique.”
Play helplessness.
The requests put in for pianist and social activist Gabriela Montero’s improvisation session on Monday night at 13 East Wheelock Street, or the “White House,” flitted from the visual to the auditory to the emotional.
Tonight, however, Montero will start her Spaulding Auditorium performance in a more traditional manner, playing Brahms’s Three Intermezzi (Op. 117) and Schumann’s Fantasie in C Major (Op. 17). After, she will take audience suggestions for improvisations.
“Music is powerful,” Montero said as she sat down to the piano to begin Monday’s performance, “and it acts as a host for our conversation.”
The conversation began with a smartphone propped up where the musical score usually goes. Displayed on the phone was Picasso’s famous Cubist piece, “Girl with a Mandolin.” The painting, created from earthy tones, uses sharp angles to depict a woman playing a mandolin.
“The woman is beautiful but perturbed,” Montero said.
She began playing in a way that resembled the plucking of mandolin strings, and the audience could hear the angularity of the work of art.
“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to share,” Montero said. “I need an audience to give [my music] to, and it becomes a collaborative piece.”
A student then asked her to use Beethoven’s “Pathétique” for her improvisation. She began playing the slow, noble tune, then speeding the pace to conjure the 1920s. The song ended on a cheerful note.
“I actually was speechless,” said Susan Brison, philosophy professor and East Wheelock faculty director. “I had never heard a classically-trained pianist improvise the way I had heard jazz pianists improvise, just so inventively and so fluently. It was full of surprises, yet it all cohered.”
Montero’s talent emerged at seven months old, when she began to play on a toy piano in her crib. By the time she was a year and a half old, she could play all of her mother’s lullabies.
“It’s not always what I wanted,” Montero said. “But I always knew.” She never studied music theory or harmony because she “wanted to do it [her] own way,” and she said she quit many times because she wanted to do something that was “useful.” She committed to music in her 30s after encouragement from Argentine pianist Martha Argerich.
Montero has performed with many of the world’s major orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics. She performed with Yo-Yo Ma during President Barack Obama’s inauguration and toured last month in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Montero found a way to combine music and social justice when she posted an original piano and orchestra composition called “ExPatria” on YouTube in August 2012. The work protested how the Venezuelan government treated its people, citing the 19,336 murders that occurred in Venezuela in 2011.
More recently, too, Montero has become an outspoken voice for Venezuelan students as they have protested the policies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government. She said she is not a politician but a defender of human rights, creating “bridges of empathy” with the audience over Venezuela.
“You hear about someone you know that just died and then you have a concert at 7:30 — a concert feels so unimportant then, but at the end of the day, it’s about the people,” Montero said. “I’m not an entertainer. I’m an artist.”
Protests began this February, and Montero said that violence has only heightened since the government began to attack and detain students when they took to the streets.
“Art is a protest, a reaction,” said Montero’s husband, opera singer Sam McElroy,. “In Gabriela’s case, the audience is aware of the gamut of emotions people are forced to deal with. It’s okay to confront suffering and cry.”
Brison said Montero made a case for how she, as an artist, does not perform to distract, to make her audience forget about what is happening in the world. For Montero, Brison said, the two go together.
The most poignant conversation from Monday’s performance was Montero’s improvisation inspired by helplessness. Jose Burnes Garza ’17, who attended the show, commented on recent events in Venezuela and how, to a lesser extent, the rest of Latin America faced similar problems with government corruption.
“You can’t help but feel helpless,” Burnes Garza said.
Burnes Garza is a member of The Dartmouth staff.
Montero countered that with helplessness comes frustration but also empowerment. She began her piece with loud, cacophonic melodies that quieted to more melancholy tones, lifting toward hope.
Ke Deng ’17 said this piece was her favorite because it went beyond just the music. Montero, Deng said, conveyed emotion through sound.
Deng recommends that the audience provide suggestions for Montero’s improvisations tonight. She hopes to see Montero react to a long, complicated story.
“I’m most curious to see if [Montero] can stay within the boundaries of the original composers for the first half of the show on Wednesday,” Deng said.
Montero will perform at 7 p.m. this evening in Spaulding Auditorium.
