El Nacimiento de Cifar

Efraín Solís transports us to a faraway island “small as the hand of an indigenous god” with Gabriela Lena Frank’s otherworldly “El nacimiento de Cifar” (“The Birth of Cifar”). “I love the way she introduces the style of the Miskito Indian music of Nicaragua to the vocal line, and mimics the Nicaraguan marimba in the piano,” says Efraín, a first generation Mexican-American baritone who hails from Southern California.

Selection from Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea (2004), poetry by Pablo Antonio Cuadra (published in Cantos de Cifar, 1971). Performed by permission of Wise Music Corp.