The Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble premiered a new symphony — titled “Sinfonía Nómada,” which translates to “Nomadic Symphony” — by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez on May 23. DCWE is the resident student ensemble at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Saturday’s concert was part of the Mexican Repertoire Initiative, a program created in 2022 by DCWE director Brian Messier to commission and program new wind music by Mexican composers. The performance was titled “Portrait of Arturo Márquez.”
Márquez, who is widely regarded as one of the most important Mexican composers of his generation, spoke about the initiative — led by the Hopkins Center in partnership with the National Autonomous University of Mexico — in an interview with The Dartmouth. It was “very important for teachers like Brian to find ways to have programs between the two countries, between two universities,” he said.
Bea Sears ’26, an oboist who has traveled to Mexico three times with Messier, recalled meeting “a wide range of really interesting and talented people” on the trips, many of whom became close friends. The exchange was a learning experience because the Mexican musicians played with their own style and energy, Sears explained.
“We were able to learn a lot from them,” she said. “I think that in Mexico they have a very different way of playing. They have a lot of charisma and vibrancy, especially in the mariachi themes. It’s just so full of life.”
DCWE manager Greta Richardson ’26, who performed harp in “Danzón No. 1,” bass drum in “Conga del Fuego Nuevo” and field drum at the opening of the movements of “Sinfonía Nómada,” said “being part of the Mexican Repertoire Initiative feels like I’m making a bigger impact in the music world” than she might have by continuing to study solo harp.
Oboist Anika Larson ’26 added that “from a student perspective, the exchange has been really valuable.”
“I get to spend time with and meet students and musicians who live in a completely different place and exist in a completely different music world,” Larson said. “It’s really interesting to see how wind ensemble looks there, and how that’s different from here.”
Students on the trip also met Márquez personally. Sears recalled being “invited to go to Arturo Márquez’s home, where he served us coffee and tea and some snacks, and we all just discussed music.” She said she believes the symphony performed Saturday took shape during those conversations.
Larson said her time with Márquez in Mexico gave her a sense of his standing there, describing him as a “cultural hero” in the country.
A composer of Arturo Márquez’s stature has not written a symphony for wind band in 75 years, according to Messier.
Composer Arturo Márquez spoke with DCWE director Brian Messier during a live discussion at the Hopkins Center for the Arts on May 23.
“We’re now in uncharted territory,” Messier said. Márquez, by “writing this work, has opened a door and provided legitimacy to the wind band as a significant artistic and legitimate ensemble.”
Messier added that he believes “other composers of a high stature” will now be more likely to write for the wind band after the “precedent” that Márquez has set.
Márquez, meanwhile, emphasized the personal significance of working with student musicians.
“It’s very important for me as a composer to have the opportunity to work with young people,” he said. “I usually work with professionals in large orchestras, and so the opportunity to work with young researchers with such talent is just wonderful.”
The program was devoted entirely to Márquez’s music. The Dartmouth Chamber Players opened with “Danzón No. 1,” followed by the DCWE’s performance of “Conga del Fuego Nuevo,” conducted by guest conductor Luis Manuel Sánchez.
The Improbable Quartet — clarinetists Jan Halloran, Bill Kirkley, Amy Advocat and Jonathan Russell — performed “Rumba Fugata.” The three-movement “Sinfonía Nómada” followed as the program’s centerpiece premiere, conducted by Messier. The concert closed with “Marcha Sonora: Aurora del Norte,” featuring a world-premiere arrangement by Messier, which audience member Sheryl Olsen described as a “rousing end” to the performance.
Saturday’s performance marked the world premiere of “Sinfonía Nómada,” a work that addresses migration, a subject Márquez said is personal to him. “I’ve been a migrant, maybe all my life, especially when I was a child,” he said. “I was in California, we were migrants.”
Composed over six months, the symphony has three movements: The first is titled “Marcha Natura: Pole to Pole (Natural March).” It draws on the natural world, which Márquez said “doesn’t have frontiers” or “laws.” His research for the symphony, he said, led him to “the study of how the birds and fishes and all kinds of animals just live in the earth with no boundaries, with no frontiers.”
The second, titled “Faro Verde: Sahuaro (Green Lighthouse),” is about struggle. It draws on Javier Zamora’s poem “Saguaros,” which describes the poet’s harrowing childhood journey as an unaccompanied migrant crossing the Sonoran Desert from El Salvador to the United States.
The third, titled “Looking South,” draws on “The Strangers’ Case,” a speech attributed to Shakespeare in the play “Sir Thomas More,” which addresses the situation of foreigners seeking refuge. Márquez said the text resonates with present-day migration, noting that “there were similar problems in London that there are now all over the world.”
One of the musical devices used to convey the symphony’s theme of migration was the whistle featured in the third movement, according to Richardson, who performed the part.
She said the sound is meant to evoke “panic and anxiety” and serve as an alarm for one’s community to warn that “something bad was coming.” She said the movement imagines the fear of knowing “that someone in your family is going to be taken away from you,” whether “a parent, a sibling or your own child.”
Despite the intense sonic elements, Catherine Hendra, parent of a DCWE member, said the program had strong mass appeal.
“Sometimes these performances blend in things that are a little harder for people to grasp,” she said. “[The symphony] was very listenable but also very creative.”
The program’s single-composer focus shaped how performers approached the music. Sears said practicing the works made her “more reflective of his message,” adding that she tried to “put [her] head where Márquez is, and try to understand his emotions, and his anger, and his sadness, and communicate that through the music.”
Márquez said composing the work required deep reflection of his own.
“I needed to do a very deep reflection about the migrants, not only in Mexico and Latin America, but all over the world,” he said.
Márquez said he chose the wind band deliberately for its emotive sound and the physical immediacy of playing it.
“I think it was very important to do it for a wind band,” he said. “It can be done with anything, even for piano solo, but the wind band is just wonderful, because the instruments are so expressive. You are in your body, in your breath.”
Márquez said the premiere at Dartmouth carries particular weight because it is the launch of a series of dozens of performances across several countries.
“It’s very important that it [Sinfonía Nómada] is going to be premiered here in Dartmouth, and especially that it’s going to be played with 42 other bands,” he said. “It’s going to be played in Mexico and in Brazil, so I could say this is one of the pieces that is going to have the most premieres, at least for my work.”
The consortium of universities and institutions playing the symphony includes the United States Marine Band, the Eastman School of Music, Yale University and the University of Texas. Messier acknowledged that the symphony deals with challenging topics that often provoke disagreement in public discourse and politics. Still, he said he believes the work remains “amazingly profound and important,” regardless of where listeners fall on the political spectrum.
Rather than advancing a direct political message, Márquez offers “an emotional, empathetic lens into what’s happening,” Messier said. For him, the project ultimately creates space for dialogue and connection.
“I think there’s room for everyone to engage in this dialogue,” Messier said, adding that the symphony carries an underlying sense of hope by bringing people together “in a world right now that’s very divisive.”
