La Jolla Symphony:Un Canto a Mexico–A Mexican Serenade. What happens when you combine an orchestra, a mariachi band, and a contemporary Mexican poet?

“I first heard about Jeff Nevin back in the late ’90s, courtesy of Chinary Ung. Ung was several years into his professorship at UCSD, and we were chatting about his students. “I have my first dissertation coming up,” he told me, referring to the first dissertation he would oversee as chair at UCSD. “My student,” he grinned, “wrote a piece for mariachi band and orchestra,” and he burst into joyous laughter. I laughed along with him, because the idea of a composer writing a mariachi piece for his dissertation at UCSD was hilarious in its violation of academic musical conventions. Most doctoral students there at the time produced somber beep-fart music with barely performable rhythms. Here was an upstart with the cojones to foist a mariachi piece on his doctoral committee!”

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