Tierra Flamenca – Program Notes 11.01.26
Guitar, Dance, and Classical Roots.
Sunday, November 1, 2026, 3:00 pm
Ruth Street Theater, Prescott
Chris Burton Jácome, flamenco guitar
Lena Jácome, dance
Jeannette Hirasawa Moore, flute
Luke Hill, violin
Cindy Binkley, viola
Wesley Skinner, cello
Printable PDF of these notes · All program notes this season · All Season 9 concerts
Chris Burton Jácome and Lena Jácome first performed with Arizona Philharmonic on November 1, 2019. Today’s concert, seven years to the day later, is a program that keeps trading places: Chris’s guitar and Lena’s dance take up works by Bach, Chopin, Ernesto Lecuona, Massenet, Pachelbel and Diego Ortiz, and five of Chris’s seven pieces open out for the AZ Phil Quartet of flute, violin, viola and cello. Chris composes, arranges, plays and sings, Lena dances, and the ensemble changes from piece to piece, from solo cello with dance, and guitar alone, to all six performers together. “Integrating classical instrumentation into the textures of flamenco is thrilling!” Chris says. “For this concert, I’m excited to explore how the flamenco guitar can bring in a new sonic perspective to some traditionally ‘Classical’ music works.”
Chris and Lena encourage new audiences to shout “¡Olé!” whenever they want to. “You can say it quiet, reserved, or you can say it real loud,” Chris says. They ask you not to clap along, because sound takes time to cross a hall: “Even if you have great rhythm, it wouldn’t matter because of the distance.” Applause after each piece is welcome: “We are excited to hear your clapping after each piece.”
Johann Sebastian Bach
Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (c. 1720)
Lena Jácome, dance; Wesley Skinner, cello
The story
Johann Sebastian Bach probably wrote his six suites for unaccompanied cello around 1720, during his years as court music director at Köthen. His own manuscript is lost, and the music comes down to us chiefly in a copy made by his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, between 1727 and 1731. A suite is a set of dances, and Bach opens each of these with a prelude in the free spirit of an improvisation. The cellist Pablo Casals found a copy of the suites in a Barcelona music shop at thirteen and called the find “the great revelation of my life.” He studied them “every day for the next twelve years” before playing one at a concert, and his recordings of 1936 to 1939, Suite No. 1 among them in Paris in 1938, renewed appreciation for them.
“For this piece, the cello is my duet partner,” says Lena Jácome, who uses “the language skills of traditional flamenco to create movement from the breathing rhythms and rich textures of the cello.”
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
The Prelude is an unbroken stream of broken chords that ring against the cello’s open strings, the low G above all. Near the end the line climbs note by note above the open D string as the energy rises, and the movement comes to rest on a full G major chord.
Chris Burton Jácome
Guajira
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
The story
Six of Chris’s seven pieces and Lecuona’s Malagueña take their names from flamenco forms, or palos. Each palo has its own mood and home ground, and most have their own compás, a cycle of beats and accents; their homes run from Cuba and Málaga to Seville, Jerez, the mining towns of the southeast and Cádiz.
The guajira is named for Cuba’s guajiros, the island’s country people, and comes from Cuban folk music; many experts say it should really be called by its Cuban name, punto cubano. Its verses are mostly about Havana and its people. Flamenco calls forms like this cantes de ida y vuelta, songs of going and coming back between Spain and the Americas.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Guitarist, dancer and singer all share the compás. The guajira is always in a major key. For the Guajira, Chris sent the quartet four falsetas, a word that in flamenco, as he puts it, “means musical interludes,” and told them that with Lena dancing, “we will place these falsetas throughout her choreography.”
Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2 (c. 1830–31), arr. David Popper; adapted by Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Wesley Skinner, cello
The story
“Chopin’s most beautiful compositions are merely reflections and echoes of his improvisations,” wrote his friend and editor Julian Fontana, and the young Frédéric Chopin improvised in public: at his Vienna debut in August 1829, asked for a Polish theme, he improvised on the song “Chmiel” (Hops), and his “parterre spies,” he wrote home, assured him people “were even dancing on the benches.” He composed the Nocturne in E-flat around 1830 to 1831, the years he left Poland and settled in Paris, and published it in 1832. He went on changing its ornaments as he played and taught it, in variants so numerous that the Polish National Edition prints them separately, drawn from his pupils’ copies, his sister Ludwika’s, and one marked up by his friend the cellist Auguste Franchomme. David Popper, a cellist born in Prague in 1843, arranged it for cello and piano.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Over a steady left hand of bass notes and wide chords, the melody returns with more written-out ornament each time, and near the end a flourish marked senza tempo, “without time,” suspends the beat. Popper gives Chopin’s melody to the cello, and in Chris’s adaptation the guitar takes the piano’s bass notes and chords, which Chris improvises within Chopin’s harmony. Today, the Chopin Nocturne is played a half step up, from E-flat to E major, and the players are free to improvise the cadenza near the end.
Ernesto Lecuona
Malagueña, arr. Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
The story
Ernesto Lecuona’s Malagueña is a Cuban piano work from his suite Andalucía, published in Havana in 1928, and Chris plays it alone, in his own arrangement for guitar. Its name comes from the malagueña, the flamenco song of Málaga, which grew from the city’s old fandangos.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
In Chris’s arrangement, the Malagueña moves from free rhythm into a twelve-beat rhythm, felt in threes for a while, and a bridge of his own leads back to the main melodies.
Chris Burton Jácome
The Kiss
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
The story
“It’s about my bride,” Chris says. Chris and Lena met at a pool party in Tempe in the summer of 2001, and properly that October at a Halloween party, where they talked for three hours in their friend’s kitchen. He was already working on the idea for the piece, and he recorded it the next year on his album Pa’lante. He remembers playing it, still unfinished, once they had started dating.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
From the start Chris knew The Kiss wasn’t flamenco, and he heard it as “a much bigger piece, meaning the guitar didn’t seem enough. I really heard the different voices.” He thought of it as an orchestral piece, and for the 2002 recording he and his co-producer added timpani samples for “that symphonic element,” while still wanting “the melodies to last longer than they can on a guitar.” Performing it with chamber players, he says, is “a really exciting… evolution,” with “other instruments that can make the music sing like I really wanted it to in my head.”
Jules Massenet
Méditation from Thaïs (1894)
Luke Hill, solo violin; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Cindy Binkley, viola; Wesley Skinner, cello
The story
Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs, after Anatole France’s 1890 novel, opened at the Paris Opéra on March 16, 1894, with the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson in the title role Massenet wrote for her. The Méditation, for solo violin and orchestra, is an orchestral interlude between the two scenes of Act II. It portrays the courtesan Thaïs turning toward a life of faith after the monk Athanaël’s visit, and Massenet brings its melody back in the last act, including at her death. Arnold Steinhardt, first violinist of the Guarneri Quartet, wrote that “it took only a generation after the opera’s debut for the Meditation to become a rite of passage for fiddlers.” Massenet himself recast the tune as an Ave Maria.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Steinhardt writes that “the beauty of its long, winding melody buttressed by languid harmonies is elusive and challenging.” Luke Hill plays the solo, and Chris’s guitar, with viola and cello, reinterprets the accompaniment; Chris improvises his part within Massenet’s harmony, and everyone follows the soloist’s pacing and phrasing.
Chris Burton Jácome
Sevillanas Nos. 1 and 2
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Sin Miedo (Verdiales)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
The story
Sevillanas Nos. 1 and 2. Seville’s spring fair, the Feria de Abril, opened in 1847 as a livestock market, and today its booths usually have a floor for dancing sevillanas. Sevillanas are sung and danced in sets of four coplas, or verses, each with its own steps, and guitarists also compose their own: these two are Chris’s.
Sin Miedo (Verdiales). Sin miedo means “without fear,” and Chris recorded the piece on his 2005 album Flamenco. The verdiales belong to Christmas in the hills above Málaga, where bands called pandas play them at their liveliest from Christmas Day to December 28, when the season ends. A panda plays guitars, a large tambourine, small cymbals and a violin, which carries the melody. The players’ hats are trimmed with ribbons and with mirrors meant to flash the sun across the ravines. At the December 28 gathering, two pandas would play together, faster and faster, until one of them lost the beat.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Sevillanas and verdiales both count in three.
Intermission
Chris Burton Jácome
Tesoro (Tonás)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
The story
Chris calls his tonás Tesoro, Spanish for “treasure.” The tonás are among flamenco’s oldest songs, rooted in Jerez de la Frontera and the Triana district of Seville and traditionally sung with no accompaniment at all; almost all experts, says Andalusia’s flamenco institute, the Instituto Andaluz del Flamenco, consider them “el cante madre del flamenco,” the mother song from which all the others come. Their family includes the martinete, which probably began in the forge, sung over a hammer striking an anvil, and Spanish uses the same word, martinete, for the small hammer that strikes a piano string.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Lena and Chris perform Tesoro alone, so watch Lena’s feet. Chris calls flamenco footwork “a critically important percussion instrument” and the dancer “the percussionist and the leader”: she decides when the music speeds up, slows down and stops, and the guitarist follows her.
Johann Pachelbel
Canon in D Major, arr. Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
The story
Johann Pachelbel, an organist from Nuremberg, was godfather to Johann Sebastian Bach’s sister Johanna Juditha and taught their elder brother Johann Christoph, who gave Johann Sebastian his first formal keyboard lessons. He wrote his Canon and Gigue for three violins and basso continuo, and nobody knows when; the first edition, in 1919, came from a manuscript that has since been lost. The Canon became famous in the 1970s, after Jean-François Paillard’s chamber orchestra recorded it in June 1968 at a much slower tempo than the first recording, made in 1938.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
The Canon rests on a ground bass, a two-bar figure of eight notes that Pachelbel repeats 28 times under the same eight chords, while three violins play one melody in canon, each entering after the one before. Chris’s arrangement adds his flamenco guitar to the flute and strings and makes room for the ensemble to improvise with him.
Chris Burton Jácome
Albaicín (Tarantas)
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
The story
The tarantas was born in Almería and spread to the mining towns of Linares and La Unión, and the Instituto calls it the trunk from which the other miners’ songs grow. La Unión’s international festival of these mining songs, founded in 1961, is held in a 1907 iron-and-glass market hall known as the “Catedral del Cante” (Cathedral of Song), and its top prize is the Lámpara Minera, the Miner’s Lamp.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Like the malagueña, the tarantas moves in free rhythm.
Diego Ortiz
Recercadas sobre tenores italianos, from Trattado de glosas (1553)
Jeannette Hirasawa Moore, flute; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Wesley Skinner, cello
The story
Diego Ortiz, born in Toledo around 1510, spent his working life in Naples and Rome, and from 1558 he was chapel master to the Spanish viceroy of Naples. In Rome in 1553 he published his Trattado de glosas, in Spanish and Italian editions, a manual for viol players on ornamenting and improvising, and he called its model pieces recercadas (searches or trials). Nine of them are written over tenores italianos, repeating bass patterns; later scholars have identified the patterns under eight of them as the passamezzo antico, passamezzo moderno, romanesca and folía. Spanish guitarists and vihuelists called variations over a repeating bass, improvised or composed, diferencias. The romanesca is closely related to, and some say identical with, the Spanish tune “Guárdame las vacas” (“Mind the cows for me”).
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Under each recercada a short pattern of chords repeats over and over, the part Ortiz printed for the keyboard, while the solo line above it spins out faster and more ornate variations. This performance runs in three parts: Ortiz’s second recercada, built on the passamezzo moderno, then his first, then the second again. Jeannette Hirasawa Moore’s flute plays Ortiz’s written solo line, Wesley Skinner’s cello plays the repeating bass, and Chris improvises the chords above it on the guitar, ornamenting the pattern as he goes.
Chris Burton Jácome
Alegrías for Chamber Quartet (premiere)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
The story
All six performers close the concert with the first performance of Chris’s Alegrías for Chamber Quartet. Alegrías, Spanish for “joys,” is one of the cantiñas, a family of songs from Cádiz. It is related to the city’s old jota, into which, the flamenco scholar Faustino Núñez writes, the people of Cádiz poured their joys.
Inside the music a closer look, for anyone who wants one
Alegrías counts twelve, with the accents on beats 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12, in a major key: count to twelve in your head through the Alegrías and listen for those five accents.
As in the Guajira, Chris has given the quartet a set of falsetas for the Alegrías, and where each one comes in is settled in rehearsal. In performance the four players watch for their cues from Chris and from Lena, which Chris calls “a big learning curve for them,” adding that “they’re very brave for jumping on board.”
Program
Johann Sebastian Bach 🇩🇪
Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
Lena Jácome, dance; Wesley Skinner, cello
Chris Burton Jácome 🇺🇸
Guajira
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Frédéric Chopin 🇵🇱
Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2, arr. David Popper; adapted by Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Wesley Skinner, cello
Ernesto Lecuona 🇨🇺
Malagueña, arr. Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
Chris Burton Jácome
The Kiss
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Jules Massenet 🇫🇷
Méditation from Thaïs
Luke Hill, solo violin; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Cindy Binkley, viola; Wesley Skinner, cello
Chris Burton Jácome
Sevillanas Nos. 1 and 2
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Chris Burton Jácome
Sin Miedo (Verdiales)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Intermission
Chris Burton Jácome
Tesoro (Tonás)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
Johann Pachelbel 🇩🇪
Canon in D Major, arr. Chris Burton Jácome
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Chris Burton Jácome
Albaicín (Tarantas)
Chris Burton Jácome, guitar
Diego Ortiz 🇪🇸
Recercadas sobre tenores italianos, from Trattado de glosas (1553)
Jeannette Hirasawa Moore, flute; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; Wesley Skinner, cello
Chris Burton Jácome
Alegrías for Chamber Quartet (premiere)
Lena Jácome, dance; Chris Burton Jácome, guitar; AZ Phil Quartet
Biographies
Chris Burton Jácome, flamenco guitar
Chris Burton Jácome is the artistic director and founder of the celebrated flamenco music and dance company Jácome Flamenco. As a flamenco guitarist and composer, Chris has played to many sold-out solo performances and has worked alongside great artists such as Compañía de María Jesús (Sevilla, Spain) and as the musical director of Calo Flamenco. Chris has been an invited guest artist of the prestigious La Guitarra California Festival multiple times, performing alongside such top classical guitarists as Pepe Romero, Ana Vidovic and Roland Dyens. He has presented his original productions at such venues as Jazz at Lincoln Center and New York City Center.
Chris’s original music can be heard on the popular TV shows Touch, Kyle XY and Greek; the feature films Amreeka and 9/Tenths; and the recently released feature film Just the Vampire Hunter, which showcases Chris’s composing skills and guitar virtuosity in multiple genres. Chris has written and produced five critically acclaimed CDs, including his album Levanto. Chris won the Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest World Category two years in a row with his original songs from Levanto.
Chris has composed chamber and full orchestral works with performances by SOU Percussion Ensemble, the Chandler Symphony Orchestra, Arizona Philharmonic and the University City Symphony Orchestra in St. Louis, Missouri.
For information on concerts, projects, compositions and more, visit chrisburtonjacome.com.
Lena Jácome, dance
Lena Jácome is a flamenco dancer, choreographer, and instructor with Jácome Flamenco. Her performance highlights include Lorca in a Green Dress with Teatro Bravo!, the World Premiere of the Pangean Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and New York City Center. Globally and nationally recognized, she has taught and performed as a guest artist for the Ibero-American Association in Indonesia and the Dance Network of South Dakota. Beyond performing, Lena designs dance curricula, including a long-term multi-residency program in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and choreographs for diverse groups spanning university settings and private studios.
Lena earned her B.F.A. in Dance Performance from the New World School of the Arts in Miami and her M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Arizona State University. Lena is the recipient of several grants to study in Spain. She has toured with Calo Flamenco under the direction of Martín Gaxiola and danced for Noche Flamenca during their summer residency at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.
She is a recent recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Opportunity Grant for her collaboration with Arizona Philharmonic on Tierra Flamenca, and her choreography Undone was a semi-finalist in Ciutat Flamenco’s competition Ciutat Batalla 2026, held in Barcelona, Spain.
Musicians
Chris Burton Jácome, flamenco guitar
Lena Jácome, dance
AZ Phil Quartet
Jeannette Hirasawa Moore, flute
Luke Hill, violin
Cindy Binkley, viola
Wesley Skinner, cello
Glossary
Terms as they come up in these notes, in plain words, with where you will meet them on this program.
- Alegrías
- Spanish for “joys”: one of the cantiñas, the flamenco songs of Cádiz, in a twelve-beat compás accented on beats 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12, in a major key. It closes the concert.
- Arrangement, adaptation
- A new version of an existing piece for different performers. Chris arranged Lecuona’s Malagueña and Pachelbel’s Canon and adapted Popper’s arrangement of the Chopin.
- Basso continuo
- In Baroque music, a bass line with chords built on it, played by a low instrument with a keyboard or lute. Pachelbel’s Canon rests on one.
- Broken chords
- The notes of a chord played one after another instead of together. The Bach Prelude is made of them.
- Cadenza
- A free, showy passage for a soloist, often improvised. The cello and guitar may improvise one near the end of the Chopin.
- Canon
- A piece in which several voices play the same melody, each starting a little after the one before, as in a round. Pachelbel’s three violins.
- Cante
- Flamenco song. El cante madre, “the mother song,” is what most experts call the tonás; La Unión’s market hall is the “Catedral del Cante,” the cathedral of song.
- Cantes de ida y vuelta
- “Songs of going and coming back”: forms that traveled between Spain and the Americas. The guajira.
- Cantiñas
- A family of flamenco songs from Cádiz, alegrías among them.
- Catalogue numbers: BWV, Op.
- BWV numbers Bach’s works (Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, the catalogue of Bach’s works); Op. (opus, “work”) numbers a composer’s pieces in order of publication, so the Chopin is Op. 9, No. 2.
- Compás
- The cycle of beats and accents that most flamenco forms are built on, shared by guitarist, dancer and singer.
- Copla
- A verse. Sevillanas come in sets of four.
- Diferencias
- The Spanish name for variations, improvised or composed, over a repeating bass, as played by Spain’s guitarists and vihuelists.
- Falseta
- A melodic passage between sections; Chris calls falsetas “musical interludes.” He sent the quartet four for the Guajira and a set for the Alegrías.
- Fandango
- A family of Spanish song and dance in three, from which the malagueña grew and to which the verdiales belong.
- Footwork
- The dancer’s feet striking the floor, played as a percussion instrument.
- Free rhythm
- Music with no fixed beat, which stretches and pauses as the performer chooses. The malagueña and the tarantas.
- Gigue
- A lively dance in compound meter that often ends a Baroque suite. Pachelbel paired his Canon with one.
- Glosas
- Ornaments or divisions: fast notes that fill out a plain melody. Ortiz’s Trattado de glosas teaches how to make them.
- Ground bass
- A bass figure repeated over and over as the foundation of a piece. Pachelbel’s two-bar bass, heard 28 times.
- Guajira
- A flamenco form from Cuban folk music, in a major key, with verses mostly about Havana.
- Interlude
- Music played between the sections of a larger work, such as the scenes of an opera. The Méditation from Thaïs is an orchestral interlude.
- Jota
- A lively folk song and dance found across Spain. Cádiz had its own, and the alegrías is related to it.
- Key, major and minor
- The home note and scale a piece is built on. Major tends to sound bright, minor darker.
- Malagueña
- The flamenco song of Málaga, grown from its old fandangos, in free rhythm.
- Martinete
- A toná probably born in the forge, sung over the strokes of a hammer on an anvil. Spanish uses the same word for the hammer that strikes a piano string.
- Nocturne
- A “night piece”: a lyrical piano piece, usually a singing melody over a flowing accompaniment. The Chopin.
- Olé
- A shout of encouragement. Chris and Lena welcome it whenever you want to shout it.
- Open string
- A string sounded without a finger pressing it down. The cello’s G string, its second lowest, rings through the Bach.
- Opera
- A drama sung to orchestral accompaniment. Thaïs.
- Ornament
- Extra notes that decorate a melody. Chopin kept changing his in the Nocturne.
- Palo
- A flamenco form, with its own mood, home ground and, for most, its own compás. Six of Chris’s seven pieces and Lecuona’s Malagueña are named for one.
- Panda
- A band of verdiales players.
- Prelude
- An opening piece. The Bach opens its suite.
- Recercada
- A “search” or “trial”: Ortiz’s word for a model piece showing how to improvise or ornament.
- Senza tempo
- Italian for “without time”: play freely, outside the beat. Near the end of the Chopin.
- Sevillanas
- The festive song and dance of Seville, in three, in sets of four coplas.
- Suite
- A set of dances, usually in one key, often opened by a prelude. The Bach.
- Tarantas
- The miners’ song of Almería, Linares and La Unión, in free rhythm.
- Tenor (tenores)
- In Ortiz, a repeating bass and chord pattern laid down underneath while a soloist varies a line above it. The tenores identified in Ortiz are the passamezzo antico, passamezzo moderno, romanesca and folía.
- Tonás
- The family of flamenco songs traditionally sung with no accompaniment, which includes the martinete.
- Transposition
- Moving a whole piece up or down to a new key. The Chopin is played a half step higher than written, in E major.
- Verdiales
- The music of the hills above Málaga, a kind of fandango in three, played by pandas with a violin carrying the melody, at its liveliest from Christmas Day to December 28.
- Vihuela
- The plucked string instrument of Renaissance Spain, tuned like a lute and shaped like a guitar.
- Viol
- A bowed string instrument of the Renaissance, held between or on the knees. Ortiz wrote his manual for it.
