Ecuadorian pianist plays traditional music at Bates College

Pianist and composer Vicente López performs a program largely based on the traditional music of his native Ecuador in a concert at 8 p.m. Friday, May 3, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College, 75 Russell Street. The concert is free and open to the public.

A product of rural Ecuador, Vicente López was born with a great musical gift, says his daughter, Patricia López de Jaramillo. (She has taught at Bates this academic year and is a founder and the academic director at the Andean Center for Latin American Studies in Quito, Ecuador.)

Now 75 years old, López earned a degree in piano from the National Conservatory of Music at the Central University of Ecuador. He taught music and served as a choral director early in his career, and continued to perform and compose even after leaving professional music.

López’s concert at Bates will combine his own compositions with popular songs, a little Beethoven and Albeniz, and traditional music of Ecuador, which will constitute the program’s second half. That music explores such typical rhythms as the sanjuanito and the pasillo, which shows a strong indigenous Andean influence. López’s own compositions include tributes to his wife and oldest son, who are deceased.

López makes music “with all his heart,” says his daughter. For her, his music conjures up a world of associations beyond the purely musical. “I just feel transported to all my ancestors, to all my background,” she says. “I feel like I am connected to so much life many, many years before my Dad.”

For more information about the performance, please call 207-786-6135.