Fiesta is devoted to Latino concert music and presents artistically significant compositions from Latin America, Spain and Portugal to listeners. The creative force behind this series is Elbio Barilari, an acclaimed composer, musician, performer and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Uruguayan-born Barilari says, "Fiesta features the hottest Latin-American music from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries."
Hidden Jewels by Camargo Guarnieri: Mozart Camargo Guarnieri was a fellow Brazilian composer with Heitor Villa-Lobos. Like Villa-Lobos, Guarnieri brought the music of Brazil to the concert stage through symphonies, operas, dance music and song. After all, with a name like Mozart what else could one be but a composer?
Composers from Spain and Portugal: Fiesta introduces rarely heard pieces by Spanish and Portuguese composers from the Baroque and early Classical periods including Manuel Canales, Vicente Baset and Joao de Souza Carvalho.