A Music in Corrales concert brings in the Friction Quartet which will perform in La Entrada Park at 3 p.m Saturday, October 23. In addition to works by Dvořák and Prokofiev, a special feature of this concert is the live premier of a new version of “El Correcaminos†a four-movement composition by Nicholas Lell Benavides. The original version premiered in San Francisco in 2019.  Benavides grew up in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, just across the river, and graduated from Albuquerque Academy before attending Santa Clara, San Francisco Conservatory and the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. He is a storyteller through music, drawing on his New Mexico roots and culture.
He recently premiered a new opera at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for Washington National Opera called “Pepito†with librettist Marella Martin Koch. They have been selected as the recipients of West Edge Opera’s Aperture commission to develop an evening length opera about civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.
Below are El Correcaminos program notes:
“It’s difficult to capture New Mexico in one symbol. I, like many New Mexicans, am the product of generations of love, conflict, migration, peace, war, spirituality, colonialism and progressivism. New Mexico is the meeting place of the South, West, East and North, much like the four-sided Zia symbol on our state flag.
“Puebloans lived here for thousands of years, followed by the Navajo (Diné), the Spanish, then Mexicans, and finally the Americans. I’ve found myself pondering how they all saw the same Land of Enchantment and how some must have gotten along and even fallen in love.