Robert Xavier Rodriguez conducts UTD's Fred Curchack, Jeff Lankov, Enric Madriguera and a large cast of other distinguished guest artists in an extravaganza of the music of the 20th-Century Spanish master composer, Manuel de Falla. The program will feature a performance of the unique puppet opera, El Retablo de Maese Pedro, based on a scene from Cervantes' Don Quixote. The concert will also include Falla’s Harpsicord Concerto, Seven Popular Spanish Songs, the Ritual Fire Dance from El Amor Brujo and a selection of guitar favorites.

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Robert Xavier Rodríguez …
The music of Robert Xavier Rodríguez is regularly performed in American, Latin American and European musical centers, with more than 2,000 professional operatic and orchestral performances in recent seasons. Rodríguez has served as composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. He is currently a professor
at The University of Texas at Dallas and active as a guest lecturer and conductor. His music is published by G. Schirmer and is recorded on the Newport, Crystal, Orion, Urtext, Albany and CRI (1999 Grammy nomination) labels. Full Bio available at : http://www.schirmer.com/composers/rodriguez/bio.html

Fred Curchack has created over forty original ensemble plays and twenty-one solos, which have been featured at scores of international theatre festivals. He has received the Gold Medal at the International Festival of Solo Theatre, the American Theatre Wing Award, Critics’ Awards in L.A., S.F., Dallas, Austin, and his work has been in the "Top Ten" of The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times. He has received funding from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, The Jim Henson Foundation, and he is a Guggenheim Fellow. After years of work in traditional western theatre, Curchack went on to study Indian Kathakali, Japanese Noh, Balinese Topeng, choreography with Alwyn Nikolais, and he trained with Grotowski’s Polish Theater Lab. He is a Professor of Art and Performance at UTD.

Tonight’s production continues a long series of collaborations between Fred Curchack and Robert Xavier Rodríguez. Previous Curchack-Rodríguez collaborations have included Curchack’s performance in Music for the Commedia dell’Arte here at UTD last Fall, Rodríguez' The Last Night of Don Juan (San Antonio Symphony) and The Song of Songs (Voices of Change/Cinnabar Opera Theater) as well as Rodríguez’ scores for Curchack’s Dante-inspired trilogy, Sexual Mythology and UTD's production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They have also performed together at UTD in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat.

Jeff Lankov…
As pianist and musical director, Jeff Lankov is an active performer throughout the United States and abroad in solo recitals and with symphony orchestras, musical theatre companies and chamber music ensembles. Recent classical performances have included concertos of Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg and Gershwin, and Lankov's own solo-piano transcription of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Following the success of his first recording, The Piano Music of George Gershwin, Lankov has begun work on a second volume of Gershwin's Piano Music, to be released in 2003. Within the musical theater venue, Lankov has served as musical director of several national tours, and locally at the Meyerson Symphony Hall, Bass Performance Hall, Majestic Theatre, Dallas Summer Musicals and Casa Manana, including more than 500 performances of Forever Plaid, the longest running theatrical event in Dallas-Fort Worth history. Last season Lankov made his Radio City Music Hall debut as musical director of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Jeff Lankov teaches at Texas Wesleyan University and performs as the pianist of the Richardson Symphony. Lankov received his formal training from the St. Louis Conservatory of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.

Enric Madriguera is Director of Guitar Studies at Eastfield College of the DCCCD and at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is past advisory chair for the Dallas Guitar Society. He performs and teaches at home and abroad with annual tours of Europe and the Americas. Recently, Enric was invited to participate at the Darwin Guitar Festival in Australia in 2002. In 2001, he visited Vietnam and he was the first U.S. Guitarist to perform and offer a class at Hanoi Conservatory of Music. Enric has recorded "Frida" by Robert X. Rodríguez and a tribute to Eduardo Mata entitled "Voces Americanas" as a member of the new music ensemble "Voices of Change" on the CRI Label. His recordings "Old World - New World" and "Duo Madriguera, Music for Two Guitars" with his wife Sabine are released on the Encore Gold Label.