Date & Time: Saturday October 22, 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Incarnation Episcopal Church, 1750 29th Avenue, San Francisco
Tickets: $25 General, $20 Seniors/Students
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Health and Safety
In accordance with health and safety guidelines from the City and County of San Francisco, a face covering is required for all concerts at Incarnation Episcopal church and must be worn at all times. Face masks must completely cover nose and mouth and have ear loops or similar to hold in place. Gaiters and bandanas are not acceptable. Please click here for full details.
Program
Las Almas will present traditional and contemporary Argentine tango music that will take the audience on a magical journey to Buenos Aires. The mission of Las Almas is to present contemporary Argentine tango through virtuosic artistic performance and informative educational events.
About
Las Almas is a collaboration between powerhouse female tango musicians, Sumi Lee, Heyni Solera, and guest violinist Teagan Faran. They originally bonded in Buenos Aires, drawn by a mutual love of tango music, as well as a realization of the inequality of professional opportunity for women in the Tango genre. They studied under the same maestros and performed with prestigious tango orchestras in Buenos Aries, and now frequently perform around the world including their respective adopted cities of San Francisco, Washington, DC, and NYC. All of the musicians are producing their own music. This concert will feature the famous Argentine tango singer, Romina Bianco, from Barcelona as a guest artist.
Heyni Solera
Praised for her “soulful bandoneón” (Washington Classical Review), Heyni Solera is a sought after bandoneonist in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Solera has enjoyed a career in the US and abroad playing with performances in Argentina, Canada and Australia collaborating with prominent musicians in the tango music scene. Heyni regularly performs with the Da Capo Tango Orchestra, which focuses on playing danceable tangos and is part of the cello/bandoneon duo, Arco & Aire, with cellist Maxfield Wollam-Fisher. She is also the bandoneonist of Solidaridad Tango Orquesta which focuses on female tango musicians in a typically male dominated genre.
As a scholar, she received her Master of Music degree in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has developed the lectures A GPS for Tango Listening: What Makes Tango a Tango? and Today’s Woman in Tango: Carving Out Spaces amongst others.
Past projects include playing in the orchestra of the highly praised IN Series production of Le Cabaret de Carmen at Source Theatre in Washington, D.C. and at Baltimore Theatre Project in Baltimore, Maryland. Solera’s current and future projects include “Today’s Tango with Heyni”, a mini-series that features today’s contemporary tango musicians throughout the world, the EP album Overture, an original contemporary tango recording project with Arco & Aire, and a bandoneón duo album dedicated to J.S. Bach to was recorded in Argentina.
Solera has enjoyed a career in the US and abroad playing with performances in Argentina, Canada and Australia collaborating with prominent musicians in the tango music scene.
Sumi Lee
Sumi Lee is a classically trained pianist who obtained a master’s degree in music, piano performance, from San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has also been professionally trained as a tango pianist from La Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce, (Class of 2018), the most prestigious tango orchestra school in the world sponsored by the city government of Buenos Aires. Lee is a widely respected piano teacher and is on the Board of Directors for the San Francisco branch of Music Teachers’ Association of California. While living in Buenos Aires, she performed with living maestros and musical directors such as Víctor Lavallén, Jose Pepe Colangelo, Osvaldo Piro, Roberto Alvarez, Daniel Binelli, Mauricio Marceli, Nicolas Ledesma, Pablo Estigarribia and many more. One of her past concerts at Teatro General San Martin in Buenos Aires was sold out to a large audience and aired live via national radio 2*4 and TV.
Since moving back to the Bay Area in 2019 after receiving her diploma, she has been performing authentic traditional and contemporary Argentine tango music with various groups including her own Corazón Tango. In October, 2019, She has toured Seoul, Daejeon and Busan, South Korea with Corazón Tango and plans to tour U.S. around the world in the near future. Meanwhile she has started writing her own music and producing her own contemporary tango music.
Teagan Faran
A native of Buffalo, NY, Teagan Faran is a multidisciplinary musician focused on enacting social change through the arts. She has recorded with the Buffalo Tango Orkestra, La Martino Orquesta Típica, and had compositions featured at the NYSSMA Conference and the Persis Vehar Competition for Excellence. Faran has recently served as concertmaster of the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and the Ann Arbor Camerata and was a member of the Orquesta Escuela de Emilio Balcarce.
As a soloist, Faran has performed with the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra (including a performance in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy), the Ann Arbor Camerata, the Williamsville East Symphonic Orchestra, and the University of Vermont Symphony.
Administratively, she worked as the AAC’s executive director for a season, and held internship positions in the Marketing and Education Departments of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Education and Concerts/Touring with Jazz at Lincoln Center. She founded Ann Arbor arts collective Red Shoe Company and is a teaching artist with the Kennedy Center, the University Musical Society, and the Sphinx Organization.
After graduating from the University of Michigan, Faran moved to Buenos Aires on a Fulbright grant. Faran was also a Turn The Spotlight Fellow, receiving their inaugural Hedwig Holbrook Prize. Faran participated in OneBeat, a fellowship in musical diplomacy and is currently attending the Manhattan School of Music, pursuing a Masters in Contemporary Performance.
Romina Bianco
Romina Bianco started singing at the tender age of 8. Ms. Biano has lived in Barcelona, Spain since 2001. Romina has performed in the most prestigious venues and festivals around the world from Argentina to Japan (The Catania Tango Festival, Tango Festival of Buenos Aires and Tokyo Tango Festival), always accompanied by international tango orchestras and musicians. To name just a few, The Catania Tango Festival, Tango Festival of Buenos Aires and Tokyo Tango Festival.
Currently, Romina is touring around Spain, Argentina, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, The United Kingdom, USA, France, Italy and Israel. Romina has released 3 albums to date “Disfrazada de mi” (Dressed up as myself), “Sin Lagrimas” (Without Tears) and “Raices de Pasion” all edited in Spain and in Argentina and Finland. Her music can be found in spotify.