Prieto: Music of the Americas

A vibrant program highlighting composers from across the Western Hemisphere will take center stage at the New World Center, conducted by one of today’s leading interpreters of Latin American music.

Prieto: Music of the Americas takes place on Saturday, November 22 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 23 at 2:00 p.m. as part of the New World Symphony’s 2025–2026 season. Fellows of the New World Symphony will be led by conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto in a concert that explores musical identity and regional character through four distinct works. The program features Alberto Ginastera’s Variaciones concertantes, Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade (After Plato’s Symposium) featuring violinist Karen Gomyo, Evencio Castellanos’s Santa Cruz de Pacairigua and Juan Pablo Contreras’s Mariachitlán.

Prieto, known for championing new music and Latin American composers, serves as Music Director of the North Carolina Symphony and has held long-term leadership roles with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México and the Louisiana Philharmonic. He brings extensive international experience and a dynamic presence to the podium. Violinist Karen Gomyo, praised for her technical brilliance and expressive depth, appears as soloist in Bernstein’s philosophical and lyrical Serenade.

From Ginastera’s lyrical and virtuosic chamber-like variations to Contreras’s festive homage to mariachi traditions, this concert offers a rich musical journey through the Americas. The evening closes with Castellanos’s spirited tone poem, inspired by a Venezuelan town’s patron saint celebration.