This year, Projeto Arcomusical joins the ranks of the many outstanding chamber music ensembles in the United States that have worked closely with Chamber Music America to develop excellent new works of music via CMA’s Classical Commissioning Program. At our 2014 performance at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, we were fortunate to befriend Elliot Cole, who expressed a strong emotional response to our work. We will work with him over the coming season to create, “Roda,” a fifteen-minute work for berimbau sextet. Roda refers to Capoeira Angola, the Afro-Brazilian martial game that prominently features the berimbau. “Roda” means wheel and as such provides ample poetry and inspiration through not just the musical canon of capoeira but also its deliberate use of the term as a metaphor for the “wheel of life.” The decision to name the work is a nod of respect to this noble tradition. Indeed, Capoeira’s inclusion of the berimbau in its practice is, in fact, largely responsible for the instrument’s thriving culture today.
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