Camarada’s Celebration of Contemporary Composers at UC San Diego Park & Market
By Ken Herman, San Diego Story
(l. to r.) La Caja Galeria owner Arturo Rodriguez & painter Hugo Crosthwaite in front of ‘Submerged 2025’ [Photo by Monique Feil]
Camarada brightened San Diego’s East Village weekend night life Saturday with Submerged, a chamber concert given at UC San Diego Park & Market. Founder and Artistic Director Beth Ross Buckley invited three of the program’s composers, Miguel del Águila, Aaron Alter, and Andrés Martín, to introduce their works as the concert progressed. And in a pre-concert talk, visual artist Hugo Crosthwaite introduced his commissioned artwork Submerged, 2025—a large polyptych composed of 6 canvases painted with acrylic and color pencil—that was displayed in the venue adjacent to Camarada’s performers.
Miguel del Águila was born in Uruguay but has spent most of his career in the U.S. His 2013 Submerged for flute, cello, harp and violin, a vibrant dance piece that suggests the sounds of South American street musicians, was inspired by Alfonsina Storni’s poem Yo el condo del mar (Meet me at the bottom of the sea). Flutist Beth Ross Buckley’s bright, spirited themes and the percussive pizzicatos of cellist Ruslan Biryukov and violinist David Buckley evoked a gritty folkloric style, amplified by harpist Elena Mashkovtseva’s bracing arpeggios and extended techniques. In the center of the piece, as the harp floats a quiet, mysterious solo, the flute and violin leave the stage to provide muffled echoes, but for the finale, everyone returns center stage for a reprise of the vivacious opening.
(l. to r.) David Buckley, Andrés Martín, Dana Burnett, Miguel del Águila, Beth Ross Buckley, Ruslan Biryukov and Elena Mashkovtseva [Photo by Monique Feil]
Pianist Dana Burnett gave an exciting, agile account of del Águila’s other offering on the program, Islamorada, a densely structured piano etude named for an island in the Florida Keys.
Aaron Alter’s Introspective Blues #1, a work by this San Diego County composer that proved a winner in the 2018 Global Music Awards, gave harpist Mashkovtseva and flutist Beth Ross Buckley the opportunity to engage in a friendly competition of admirable bravura flourishes.
In 2022 the San Diego Symphony performed Andrés Martín’s impressive Double Bass Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra’s Principal Bass Jeremy Kurtz-Harris as soloist. Saturday we were able to experience the composer as soloist in “Aria,” the middle movement of his Double Bass Concerto. All five of Martín’s Camarada colleagues delivered a convincing chamber realization of the orchestra part, and Martín, who also serves as Camarada’s Composer-in-Residence, clearly owned the luminous phrases that traversed his instrument’s amazing wide range.
Camarada premiered Martín’s Tango Bajo el Agua two years ago in a La Jolla concert, and Saturday marked its third return by the ensemble. In this dark, pensive tango written in Martín’s fluent neo-Romantic idiom, we hear soaring themes by the flute and violin in the spirited outer sections and gorgeous piano arabesques under the flute cantilena in the more relaxed middle section.
The concert’s sole work from standard repertory, Joaquín Turina’s Tema y Variaciones from his Ciclo Plateresco, Op.100, for piano and harp opened the concert. In the heyday of Neoclassicism between the World Wars, Turina added traditional Spanish musical elements to the style. In this elegant example of his approach, Burnett breezed through its ravishing parallel piano chords and Mashkovtseva countered with extravagant, scintillating arpeggios on the harp. San Diegans should easily understand the title of Turina’s larger work, since all of the architecture in the heart of Balboa Park from the 1915 Exposition is done in extravagant Plateresque style.
This concert was presented by Camarada on Saturday, November 8, 2025, at UC San Diego Park & Market in the East Village.