Carmen Elena Barreiro

Carmen Elena Barreiro

SOLO ARPA

Traditional Music from Venezuela and Beyond

Carmen Elena Barreiro lives in San Diego, California, where she promotes the folkloric music from her country, Venezuela, and other Latin-American countries with harp tradition. In addition, she is expanding her musical horizons towards Celtic, Classical, and Jazz music.

Here Carmen Elena presents her first solo recording Solo Arpa, where she plays a precious selection of her repertoire. The first piece, Seis por Derecho, is a “joropo”, a cheerful rhythm danced by the cowboys from the plains of Venezuela and Colombia. Other joropos are Remolino (where the music imitates a whirl), Chipola, La Guacharaca, and Alma Llanera (considered the “unofficial anthem” of Venezuela). Fiesta en Elorza is a “pasaje”, a kind of slow joropo. The Arrival of the Queen is a pasaje-joropo composed by Carmen Elena inspired in Handel’s The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Probably one of the best known Latin-American rhythms is the “bolero”, and Sabor a Mí, by the Mexican composer Álvaro Carrillo, is famous world-wide. The Lambada is also a very popular dance traditional in Bolivia and Brazil. Finally, in El Pájaro Campana the harp imitates the song of the bell-bird from Paraguay.

Jumping to Europe, Carmen Elena interprets Anonymous Romance, a Spanish piece originally composed for guitar. However, since the Venezuelan musical tradition originated in Spain, this theme played by Carmen Elena sounds as if it was created for her instrument. In a radical change of style and instrument Carmen Elena plays three Irish traditional pieces on her Celtic harp; her interest in Celtic music comes from her father’s Celtic heritage. Finally, the famous Prelude BWV 846a by Bach is played in the Venezuelan harp, where its unique sound gives new live to this composition, despite the limitations of this diatonic instrument.

Randy Cierley-Sterling, Engineer and Digital Mastering
David Salom i Arbona, Executive Producer and Design

The Arrival of the Queen

Recorded at Morgan Ranch Studios, Encinitas, California, July 2004