Watching Alondra de la Parra's face when she's conducting is to see music transfigured into a myriad of expressions. With her cheeks slightly flushed, the 27-year-old Mexican maestra is like an opera diva experiencing consecutive moments of love, ecstasy, and resolution. Her hands float, caressing and jabbing the vibrating air in front of her, as she coaxes a glorious sound from the musicians who make up the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas.
"Physically, you have to create a picture of what you want the score to sound like, in a way that is expressive and helpful to the musicians," de la Parra tells me after rehearsing a buoyant Astor Piazzolla composition called Tangazo at the Manhattan School of Music. Her green eyes are still shining with the energy she has unleashed. "You should be the music, not just look like the music," she says, letting down her long hair, which had been efficiently tied back during the rehearsal.
Certainly, de la Parra is the face of the orchestra she founded in New York in 2004 with the idea of promoting composers and performers from the Americas, which, in theory, means taking in everything from Buenos Aires to Boston. But in practice, the rich tradition of concert music from south of the border—particularly Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil—dominates the POA's repertoire. And that tends to mean a whole lot more syncopation: The orchestra can produce rich symphonic sounds, but it also can swing like a Latin dance band when asked to play, say, Danzón No. 2, a high-spirited composition by the Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. The orchestra will perform this piece, along with the Piazzolla, when it embarks on its No Borders concert tour in November, which includes dates in New York (at New York University's Skirball Center), Dallas, and Washington, D.C.
"I thought there should be an orchestra dedicated to this type of music," says de la Parra, whose voice is lightly inflected with a Mexican accent. "Classical music started from the old continent, and we came into the picture late. All of a sudden the curtain was opened, and there was a whole continent that hadn't had its chance, just waiting and hiding." Her own background reflects the cultural mix of music she now performs. Born in New York to academic parents, she grew up in Mexico City from the age of two. In her teens, de la Parra attended St. Leonards-Mayfield, a Catholic English boarding school for girls, honing her skills on the piano and the cello, before returning to the United States to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where she is currently finishing up a master's in conducting. In the meantime, she went out and founded her very own orchestra, which she now refers to as "my entire life."
Over the past three years, de la Parra has started to make her mark within the classical community, as part of a new wave of energy coming from Mexico and points south. "She has a combination of the fearlessness of youth with Mexicanism," says Osvaldo Golijov, the celebrated Argentine composer, whose own Last Round was performed by the POA in 2006. "She's not even aware of what she's doing in terms of the barriers she's overcoming."
