It’s been more than 20 years since Ilmar Gavilán and José Luis Gomez played in the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under the ensemble’s founder and conductor Claudio Abbado.
Both were violinists in their early 20s just starting their careers. They roomed together as the youth ensemble toured six weeks throughout Europe, with stops in Berlin, Prague, Paris, London and other big cities, Gavilán said.
Once the tour ended, they kept in touch but haven’t seen each other since.
“I follow him, he followed me,” said Gomez, who traded his violin for a baton after taking first prize in the 2010 International Sir Georg Solti Conductors’ Competition in Frankfurt, Germany. He has been music director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra since 2016.
Gavilán, a child prodigy in his native Havana, Cuba, came to the United States after training in the Soviet Union and founded the Grammy-winning Harlem Quartet in New York.
Earlier this week, the pair was reunited when Gavilán and fellow Harlem Quartet member violist Jaime Amador arrived in Tucson for a two-week artist in residency with the TSO.
Violist Jaime Amador will join fellow artist in residence violinist Ilmar Gavilán in two events with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra during their two weeks in Tucson.
“It’s going to be so much fun. We grew up and we have completely different lives. It’s crazy that we’re meeting in Tucson, if you ask me, of any place,” Gavilán said during a phone call last week from New York. “I think it will be really great catching up and really emotional and fulfilling to see both of us in our prime. Last time I checked he was a violinist and now he’s a maestro. It’s going to be phenomenal.”
“They are great performers, individually, but it is a great opportunity to bring not only one person but two who already work together,” Gomez said. “When you put people who play chamber music together, it’s something special. They have the ability to communicate with one another (musically).”
This is the first time Gavilán and Amador, the Puerto Rican violist who joined Harlem Quartet in 2012, have done a duo residency.
The pair will join eight TSO musicians for the chamber concert “Strings Without Borders” on Saturday, Oct. 28, and Sunday, Oct. 29, at the Tucson Symphony Center and will solo with the full orchestra in next weekend’s “Mostly Mozart” MasterWorks concert at Catalina Foothills High School.
“As chamber musicians we get to play a lot of string quartets and tour around, but this residency, we don’t only play as the soloists but we also play chamber music with the musicians,” Amador said. “We get this collaboration.”
This weekend’s TSO Up Close concert includes works by William Grant Still and Dizzy Gillespie as well as “Pan con Timba” for string quartet and piano, composed by Gavilán’s brother, Aldo López-Gavilán.
The brothers, both virtuosos, Ilmar on violin, Aldo on piano, are the subject of the award-winning documentary “Los Hermanos/The Brothers.” The film traces the brothers’ parallel lives — Ilmar rose to fame in the United States while Aldo remained in their native Cuba — and their first performances together as adults including a 2017 Arizona Friends of Chamber Music performance with the Harlem Quartet.
Amador said the TSO residency also is checking a career box for him and Gavilán when they perform Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, which features a viola and violin soloist.
“You have two soloists on stage where they share the same material. You have this operatic drama of two artists doing probably the same kind of work,” Amador said. It’s a very unique composition and it’s one of the greatest pieces ever. And Mozart did a great job.”
“We always talked about playing Sinfonia Concertante at some point, but we never managed to fulfill that dream,” he added. “So now, the Tucson Symphony is making that dream come true.”
“The Sinfonia is one of the most interesting examples of Mozart using instrumental music in a broader, big ensemble picture instead of just a violin concerto or flute concerto or a piano concerto,” Gomez said. “He created a concerto for an ensemble. I knew this would be interesting for them (Gavilán and Amador).”
The Up Close and MasterWorks concerts are part of the TSO’s ¡Celebración Latina! series.
Watch now: For the second year, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra is collaborating with the Mexican Consulate of Tucson to present the annual Mexican Independence Day concert.
