Originally from Mexico, Gerardo Calderon studied classical guitar at the Escuela Superior de Musica in Mexico City and theory and composition at Portland Community College. He plays a variety of Latin stringed instruments, as well as pre-Columbian instruments such as clay flutes, silvato de viento, teponaztles, huehuetl, tambores de agua and tenabaris. Gerardo is the musical director of Grupo Condor Latin American Folk Music and has toured all over the United States, Canada and Europe.
Cindy Williams Gutierrez is a poet-dramatist who collaborates with artists in music, theatre, and visual art. Her poems and reviews have been published in many literary journals. She is currently finishing her first verse play A Dialogue of Flower and Song. Three of her plays have been produced by the Miracle Theatre and Insight Out Theatre Collective in Portland, Oregon. Cindy earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program, with an emphasis on ancient Mexican poetics.
The Poetry and Music of Ancient Mexico
Join poet Cindy Williams Gutierrez and musician Gerardo Calderon for a journey to the spirit of ancient Mexico. Through a live performance of Aztec-styled poetry and music, this collaborative presentation engages in a haunting dialogue with "the ones who have gone before." The presentation features a series of poems written in the mythic voices of Nahua poet-princes and princesses accompanied by Mexican indigenous music. Musical virtuoso Calderon performs Mesoamerican rhythms on water drums, turtle shells and butterfly cocoon rattles, and otherworldly melodies on clay flutes and wind whistles, to transform Cindy's poems into the "flower and song" of the ancients.
