Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Photo by Sergio Yazbek
On Sunday, September 14, at 4 p.m., join the Asheville Chamber Music Series (ACMS) for its 2025/2026 season opener, Quartets from the Americas: African Echoes, featuring Cuarteto Latinoamericano. The performance will be held at St. Matthias Episcopal Church, in Asheville.
This will be Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s first performance in Asheville as well as their last season together as the musicians plan to disband next year after a career spanning 44 years.
With the works selected for the program, the musicians hope to remind audiences that many cultures have enriched classical music as we have come to know it. “It’s fascinating to hear how African music has permeated the music of the Americas,” says Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s first violinist Saul Bitran. “We are presenting a very attractive program which includes works written by Latin American and US composers either of African ancestry or by non-Black composers featuring the Afro-American musical heritage in their compositions. Even though there is, of course, a lot of variety in these compositions, we can certainly detect a common thread among them, especially in the rhythmic aspect and somewhat in the melodic lines.” He cites jazz, samba and mambo as examples of genres influenced by music brought from Africa during the slave trade. “With this program, we want to showcase and pay homage to this outstanding musical heritage,” says Bitran. Composers represented in the program include Dan Román, Tania León, Alejandro Cardona, Blas Emilio Atehortúa, Adolphus Hailstork, Paquito D’Rivera,
Julián Orbón, Roberto Sierra and Leo Brouwer.
Cuarteto Latinoameriano won Latin GRAMMYs for Best Classical Recordings in 2012 and 2016, has been recognized with the Mexican Music Critics Association Award and three times has received Chamber Music America/ASCAP’s Award for Adventurous Programming.
Other ACMS performances during the 2025/2026 season include the Jasper String Quartet (October), the Manhattan Chamber Players with David Fung (February), Trio Bohémo (March) and the Astralis Chamber Ensemble (May).
To learn more or to purchase tickets, visit AshevilleChamberMusic.org. St. Matthias Episcopal Church is located at 1 Dundee Street, in Asheville.
