Tag Archives: music

San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

SMA Events for April 7-13: Eclipse was cool … but wait, there’s more!

It’s a promising week when an eclipse of the sun is not really the best thing happening in San Miguel de Allende. I mean, you can’t even look directly at it unless you are a former president of the U.S. or you have special glasses.

What fun is that?

Well, it could be some fun even though we’re on the “partial” side of the path. Just, you know, take care of your own eyeballs. So you can see what else is coming up this week.

There is a lot to be excited about — boxing, bullfighting, classic movies and plays, crazy good singers and musicians, a Jerry Rife photography exhibition (see photo above), and a burlesque show that includes the Mexican Elvis — El Vez. (Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of El Vez. Oh, come on!) The ones doing all the burlesque are Moscato Sky, Carmen Caliente, and Ruby Mimosa — and with names like that, baby you know you want a front-row seat.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

Events for March 31 – April 6: Last hurrah for Easter and High Season and then …

If you haven’t been, you owe it to yourself to go see the Exploding Judases, today, Sunday, at noon. Go sooner and get a close-up look at the lifesize papier mache figures that will be blown to smithereens. You may even recognize one or two! You may even want to project a name or two of your own onto the more anonymous ones.

Frankly, the pyrotechnics signal the end of High Season, that semi-sad time of year when the season begins to change, to heat up and get really really dry, and all that money changes course and begins to flow back north to the United States and Canada.

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

March 24-31: An Easter parade of things happening in San Miguel de Allende this week

What better way to kick off Holy Week than the sacred rivalry U.S.A vs. Mexico in the finals of the Concacaf Cup — again? Ok, there are better ways if soccer isn’t your religion. We’ve got them here! (Photo: Concacaf)

You can attend two magnificent classical performances on the same day, a spooky play reading, a night of expert storytelling, and learn how to read “Ulysses” for pleasure. Watch as the greatest soccer rivalry in the Western Hemisphere fires up again Sunday night. Take to the stage for a Live Mic night, watch an Oscar-winning documentary, or see one of the greatest movies of all time.

The toughest seat in town will be for the re-birth of the guitar-fueled Media Luna’s trio of concerts.

Probably most important of all is that all week long the Catholic faithful will be reliving the Passion of Christ in ceremony, pageantry, prayer, liturgy, and in the end pyrotechnics.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

SMA Events, March 17-23: From Semana Santa to Carlos Santana

One thing is certain, San Miguel de Allende sunsets will always be there for you. Even if you can’t make all the other stuff that goes on every day and night.

We’re a busy little town. That’s for sure. This week we have Semana Santa and it started while you were probably still in bed. In the photos above, families help dress the streets for the arrival of the Lord of the Columns statue. This is the 201st year that it has been carried to San Miguel from Antotonilco.

More events leading up to Easter are on their way.

Meanwhile, there are two Santana events — a tribute concert and a documentary screening that will be attended by his drummer. There are two events for the Bomberderos, our mighty fire department for the past 40 years. There are also two events that find their inspiration in death — one in not being dead yet and one that faces the inevitability that death is coming. Pick your favorite.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

Just some of the stuff going on this week in San Miguel

What the heck is going on?

We hear that a lot now that there is no longer a weekly newspaper in San Miguel de Allende. (Not that the newspaper was all that informative. But it was better than nothing.)

The other thing we hear is “I didn’t know that was happening? How did I miss it?”

Easy. Stuff to do is all over the place. Sometimes in your Facebook feed. Sometimes in your e-mail. Sometimes on websites dedicated to local stuff. Sometimes by word of mouth. Sometimes by a poster pegged to a local bulletin board.

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Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

So much to do this week in San Miguel de Allende, my head is about to burst

Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle will be performed this week in San Miguel (See information below.)

Ah, that special time of the year when you ask yourself, “Why can’t I be in two places at once? Or three?” That time is now.

This is the time when people with money from the north pour across the border unchallenged and settle in for one month or several and begin to madly buy up tickets to a vast number of events – all of which we only see a hint of the rest of the year.

But few and far between though they might have been, you could reasonably trust that an empty seat could be claimed moments before a performance would begin.

You know the Season is here because – even though arts and cultural events have multiplied like sex-crazed rabbits – you will frequently hear that dreaded phrase, “Sorry. Completely sold out,” from a voice that actually sounds quite chuffed and hardly sorry at all.

Facebook, in a marvelous act of undercounting, posts a message to me on Monday morning: “Reminder: You have five events coming up this week.” It didn’t even get the right five.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

So, what’s passing by your front door today?

This is mine.

The Parroquia San Antonio de Padua is just a block away and you could hear the momentum building all morning — trance-dancing, church services shot out to the courtyard through loudspeakers, cohetes exploding overhead, church bells, primal cheers …

It builds and builds like a head of steam in a boiler until it all bursts out on Callejon San Antonio and dances, trips, oozes, roars, and flips down the street toward the main drag, The Ancha. Like festive lava flowing at a Mardi Gras party.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Making the Bohemian scene

Ok, there probably wasn’t a real Bohemian within 10 blocks of this amazing venue. But “La Boheme” was indeed being performed inside.

Mighty lavish surroundings for a tragic tale of starving students and prostitutes. That’s the Italians for you. That’s opera for you.

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San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel’s fledgling Operisima Mexico finds a glamorous new home in a garden of earthly delights

Rogelio Riojas-Nolasco, founder and music director of Operisima Mexico, reflects on the opera studio’s first year in front of Villa Puccini on the morning of their premiere performance here of “La Bohème.” The owners of Villa Puccini, John and Joy Bitner have opened their doors and hearts to the opera troupe.

The modest wooden door in the high garden wall opens into El Rio y La Paloma No. 2 in the distant and dusty San Miguel outpost of Los Frailes. Stepping through the portal feels a bit like Dorothy stepping out of Auntie Em’s farmhouse into Oz.

Behind this wall is indeed another world so unexpected and beautiful as to momentarily throw you off balance.

The path before you leads to a distinguished columned building in the Greek Revival style — now to become an opera house. To the left is a fountain with a sculpture of Hercules riding the back of a dolphin. In the distance, another fountain celebrates Dionysius. To the right is an Italian villa and beside it is a weighty and somber stone Medieval tower.

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photography, Rants and raves, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Free festival lets maestros take San Miguel’s ‘new’ 1875 pipe organ at Templo de la Tercera Orden out for a spin — and the public is invited along for the ride

After today’s concert in the Temple of the Third Order on Calle San Francisco, the maestro David Soteno Jimenez from Metepec in the State of Mexico had nothing but praise for the nearly 150-year-old pipe organ on which he performed.

“It is magnificent,” he enthused. “You see that it has only one keyboard and yet it has such a range of sound.” His one observation was that the stops that provide the keyboard its range take a bit of muscle to pull out — not an easy feat when your fingers are rolling a glissando down the keys.

He laughed as he mimicked a tug of war with the instrument, then showered it with more love.

Soteno Jimenez is the first artist from outside of San Miguel de Allende to “kick the tires” so to speak on the recently installed organ.

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