Isabel Dobarro Discusses her new album Kaleidoscope

Isabel Dobarro Discusses her new album Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscopeexplores the deepest spectrums of my musical journey, a journey whose paths have been deeply influenced by my discovery of the works of women composers. Going on an octet of years now, my piano-performance career has sought to pique attention toward these marvelous women’s relevant contributions. I want to promote their diverse musical oeuvres worldwide, and the present recording serves as genesis for that. For different reasons, I deeply admire each of the composers selected to grace this album, and it was both a thrill and a delight to perform their works. Each composition has profoundly affected me as a player, a person, and as a woman.

Dobrinka Tabakova’s “Nocturne” explores an intimist atmosphere whose subtle colors and frail feelings never fail to touch one’s soul, while Tania León’s explosive “Tumbao” intersperses passionate Latin rhythms amid contemporary musical language, creating a piece full of life, hope and light. These two pieces perfectly set the listener up for Gabriela Ortiz’s fiery tour de force, “Estudio No.3,” a virtuosic and imaginative treat for both pianist and listener.

Besides being an exploration, Kaleidoscopeis also a dialogue, one where diverse musical languages merge, synthesize, and flourish together. 

For example, throughout Julia Wolfe’s “Earring,” two rhythms and two worlds, one rhythmic and one melodious, first move in different directions before gracefully fusing at the end. Yoko Kanno’s work, “Hana Wa Saku,” dedicated to the victims of Japan’s March 2011 earthquake, one of the country’s deadliest, counterpoints sorrow with hope, sadness with light, ultimately becoming a marvelous anthem for resilience. 

“Water Dance” by Karan Tanaka explores reflections of water and its variations as an eternal fount of inspiration. Similarly inspired by water, Carolyn Morris’s soulful “Blue Ocean” delivers the listener to the composer’s earliest memories growing up by the sea along Australia’s Great Ocean Road. Nkeiru Okoye’s “Dusk,” from her African Sketches, takes the listener on another journey not only into the fascinating colors of African music but also into oneself. Melancholic and intimate, Okoye’s piece closely connects to my inner emotions.

With its sense of nostalgia, “Buenos Aires, Despierta y Sueña” by Claudia Montero evocatively transports the listener into the very streets of that South American city, while Caroline Shaw’s “Gustave Le Gray” offers not only a center piece of the contemporary classical repertoire but a fascination that explores sound, form, transformation and color. Global musical reach is also within the grasp of Suad Bushnaq’s “Improvisation,” which invites the composer’s Arabic musical roots into Romantic piano language, creating a rich musical tapestry.

Kaleidoscope concludes very close to my heart as well, for I was honored to be the dedicatee of Carme Rodríguez’s “Alalá das Paisaxes Verticais,” a thrillingly evocative musical portrait of my home region of Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition and contemporaneity meet as compellingly as they do amid the tracks of this album.