Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized, Writings

Bob’s really good day

Behind me, fresh rainwater surged down Calle Terraplen like a full-blown arroyo wash. The rain beats a staccato rhythm on the roofs of curbed cars. I was inside Hotel Hacienda El Santuario’s nearly empty dining room, chilly but dry.

On the small table before me was a hot cup of black coffee and a curious but tasty postre of cornbread topped with ice cream, caramel sauce, and chopped nuts.

Not more than 20 feet away, through the archway into the open-air courtyard, pianist Javier Garcia-Lascurian and cellist Guillermo Sanchez Romero were working their way through a heart-rendering version of Saint-Saëns’s “Le Cygnet” (The Swan). Huddled along the barely sheltered walls of the courtyard sat the hardiest classical music audience I’ve ever seen. Some had umbrellas up to supplement the scant coverage of the eaves.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Fireworks one day, serenely beautiful concert the next — the holidays have arrived in San Miguel

If the Christmas season got off to a banging start with the tree lighting and intensive fireworks display on Friday, the holiday was elevated to a serenely beautiful level on Sunday by a concert featuring organ and brass instruments in the Templo de la Tercera.

The concert was under the aegis of Chorale San Miguel and completely underwritten by arts patrons John and Joy Bitner. That’s right, some people give fruit cakes for Christmas, the Bitners throw open the doors to an ancient church and put on a concert of mostly classical music for free.

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Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized

Composer Hoppé takes audience on a memorable journey with the help of some talented friends

The theme of Michael Hoppé’s annual San Miguel de Allende concert on Wednesday night was “Together!” And, indeed, even inside the expansive and nearly full Teatro Angela Peralta, it was a cozy affair.

That was largely due to the artist’s engaging reminisces between each of the 21 compositions that were performed and the music itself which is endlessly appealing on so many emotional levels.

But Hoppé had a subtitle to offer: Encouragement. You could see it in the five talented musicians who took turns performing with the maestro and in his own recollections on the trajectory of his career.

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Monarch butterflies migrate on a wing and a prayer, but for how much longer … and does it matter?

Monica Maeckle is a glass-half-full kind of gal. 

How else to take her pronouncement about the Monarch butterfly on Tuesday night, that their ”migration is endangered, but the butterfly is not”?

It feels a little like saying “The Louvre Museum is burning to the ground, but we’ll still have great digital pictures of all the art.”

Frankly, I don’t know quite how I felt after Maeckle spoke as part of the i3 (ideas that inform & inspire) lecture series.

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

A one-time Nicaraguan emigree to U.S. flourishes as a restaurateur in Mexico City

Barrio Cafe, Ave. Sonora 201, Cuauhetenoc, Mexico City.
Barrio Cafe, Ave. Sonora 201, Hipódromo, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City. (Photo by Barrio Cafe)

We were in Mexico City, enjoying coffee and a bite to eat at a corner restaurant just a block off the expansive Parque de Mexico, in the popular Hipódromo, Cuauhtémoc, neighborhood.

The young and athletic hostess Ayse Lang, who had seated us at the sidewalk table of Barrio Café, stopped by to see how our late-morning coffee break was going. 

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

i3 talk: Dr. Nancy Hayden gives a glimpse into the very crowded future of space

On Tuesday, A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched, “the company’s 12th rideshare mission to a sun-synchronous orbit. Onboard are a variety of customer satellites, including 35 satellites integrated by Exolaunch along with 36 SuperDoves and Pelican-2 from Planet Labs PBC.”

On Wednesday, SpaceX launches its “sixth, suborbital flight test of its fully integrated Starship rocket, a combination of the Ship upper stage (S33) and the Super Heavy booster (B14). SpaceX plans to catch the Super Heavy booster using the chopsticks on the launch tower, but will make a final determination on the catch following liftoff and stage separation.”

On Thursday, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket will launch the company’s previously delayed Blue Ring spacecraft, which is capable of both hosting and deploying multiple payloads.

(Source: spaceflightnow.com See update at bottom of this page.)

Also on Tuesday, space and security expert Dr. Nancy K. Hayden discussed the future of outer space and the increasingly heavy and chaotic traffic that is shooting out of planet Earth like hair plugs out of Elon Musk’s head.

Her talk for the i3: ideas that inform and inspire‘s Conversations with Big Thinkers lecture series at La Casona Event Center was first promoted as “Space: Brave New World or Wild Wild West?”  Somewhere along the line, out of respect for the growing congestion on the extraterrestrial freeways surrounding Earth, she added a third possibility — “Close Encounters” — to that title.

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#smwc2025, Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Margaret Atwood has some thoughts on the future, and not just the one she envisioned in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’

Let’s just get right to the point that is on everyone’s minds: Are we barreling headlong into the dystopian patriarchy depicted by Margaret Atwood in “The Handmaid’s Tale”?

Says Atwood: “I don’t think we’ll get the uniforms.”

Ba-boom.

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Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Dominic Cheli in concert: Stop me if you’ve heard this one (I guarantee you have not)

A classical pianist walks into eight bars …

If you think there is a punchline,  the chaconne is on you.

Actually, it was the “Chaconne in G minor” by Thomaso Antonio Vitali and the pianist was Dominic Cheli in his return performance after two years away to San Miguel de Allende on Friday night at St. Paul’s Church.

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Cellist Alexander Hersh returns to SMA

What’s a musician to do when his iPad goes blank in the middle of a concert?

I’ll tell you.

Because it happened last July at St. Paul’s Church in the midst of an audaciously good performance by cellist Alexander Hersh and pianist Evren Ozel.

I can’t recall if it was Debussy’s Cello Sonata, or Dohnanyni’s “Ruralia Hungarica,” or the Cello Sonata from Chopin.  

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Red sun in the morning

The sculpture is called “Sol” by Colombian artist Edgar Negret, a pioneer in abstract geometric sculptures.

You can find it on the entrance grounds of the Rosewood Hotel San Miguel, a spot where they seem to favor large works of art that pulsate in a light wavelength between 610 and 780 nanometers.

The previous sculpture there was called “Britannia” and it was just as red.

It works, too.

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