A Critical Review of ‘Ibis Escarlate – The Flight of the Guará | Folha de Cubatão
- Fernando Britto
- Mar 12
- 2 min read
by Maestro Roberto Farias On December 1, 2024, Cubatão received yet another tribute through its artists, specifically the Cubatão Symphonic Band. Reaffirming its artistic vocation, especially in music, within the Symphony in the Park Series, consisting of five concerts made possible by budget allocations from the Cubatão City Council, this pioneering musical group, now celebrating 55 years of uninterrupted activity, played a central role in the grand world premiere of Ibis Escarlate – The Flight of the Guará! by the young composer and major contributor to Cubatão’s artistic groups, Fernando Britto. His talent was discovered in the 2000s by Maestro Roberto Farias, who served as his musical mentor for many years.
Ibis Escarlate – The Flight of the Guará!, originally composed for a symphonic band with a duration of approximately 7 minutes and 30 seconds, simultaneously exalts the figure of the Scarlet Ibis, the symbolic bird of Cubatão, and highlights the city’s recognition as a cradle of great musical talent. This challenging piece, blending tonalism, modalism, atonalism, serialism, and polytonalism, demands an ensemble of exceptional musicians and precise, conscious conducting to bring forth its rare beauty.
Fernando Britto’s remarkable compositional skill and undeniable artistic-musical talent allow Ibis Escarlate to resonate with audiences of various aesthetic backgrounds. Its rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic elements traverse both the dense and the crystalline, immersing listeners in a dreamlike vision of the Scarlet Ibis’s splendor.
The instrumentation—featuring piccolo, flutes, oboes and English horn, clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, saxophones, horns, trumpets, flugelhorns, trombones, euphoniums, tubas, double basses, piano, timpani, and percussion—is uniquely suited to the Cubatão ensemble, a true pioneer in this orchestration model. According to the composer, Ibis Escarlate – The Flight of the Guará! is a prelude to a larger future work, which may include a contemporary dance component, inspired by Stravinsky’s great ballet scores such as The Firebird.
Fernando Britto is establishing himself as one of the most prominent Brazilian composers of today, winning major national and international composition competitions across various formats, including symphonic band, symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments. His creative process is remarkably fast, with works conceived in extraordinarily short periods, proving that every second of his thoughts transforms into musical ideas for his ever-evolving compositional path. Bravissimo, Fernando Britto! Congratulations, Cubatão!
Maestro Roberto Farias
Artistic Coordinator of the Cubatão Symphonic Band and Honorary President of IC-BASIC – Cultural Institute of the Cubatão Symphonic Band
This text is a reproduction of the article published in the newspaper Folha de Cubatão:
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