A7 » NEWS » JANUARY 31, 2008 » THE METROPOLITAN

Maestro finds his rhythm at MetroWhenever Alejandro Rivas rais-

es his baton in the air leading Metro students through complex notes and melodies, he feels at home.

For Rivas, standing on stage is something indescribable, almost surreal.

“From the moment I raise my baton, I just think about music from beginning to end,” he said.

The second-year orchestra con-ductor, a native of Venezuela, has found himself at Metro where he encourages his students to push themselves to a higher level of mu-sicianship.

He also recognizes the lack of interest at Metro toward classical music.

The one thing that the music department wants to improve is get-ting the student body at Metro more involved in the arts.

“The faculty here has worked hard in telling the students, not only music minors or majors, about all the great opportunities here to enjoy ensemble concerts or musicals,” he said.

“Our goal is to see an increase of interest in our Metro students toward arts by making them aware about all the great stuff the music department has to offer … more than 60 concerts are programmed for the spring semester alone.”

Metro students can enjoy or-chestra concerts on campus at no charge, but Rivas said that if they were able to attend performances outside of Auraria, it would enrich their lives immensely.

“It’s easy for a student to stay home with an iPod, even if they like classical music,” he said.

“It’s expensive to go to perfor-mances. We need to make life easier for students so they can enjoy these things without worrying how much

they’re going to spend.”The music department tries to

catch the attention of Auraria stu-dents through different music fes-tivals during the year such as the String Festival, Jazz Festival, the Cho-ral Celebration and dozens more.

“These are all events free for Metro students and really fun to at-tend,” Rivas said.

Not only are the performances entertaining, but watching Rivas

conduct is just as amusing. A cellist at age 8, Rivas began

touring Venezuela performing as a soloist and a part of various ensem-bles. Ten years later, showing inter-est in conducting, Rivas studied un-der his father, a fellow musician.

He was then accepted to one of the most prestigious music conser-vatories in the nation in Cincinnati, where he earned his master’s and doctorate in orchestral conducting.

Impressed by Metro’s music pro-gram, he was excited about what Denver had to offer culturally.

Rivas’ passion for the arts is seen through his conducting, and it is evi-dent that his students feel the same.

Amy Medina, who has played the clarinet for Metro’s orchestra for four years, talks about Rivas in high esteem and commented on the sig-nificant changes he has brought to Metro’s orchestra.

“He is an amazing, passionate conductor who truly believes in the music … he feels it in his heart, and it’s really inspiring,” she said. “The whole ensemble has greatly im-proved in the last two years that he has been here.”

Metro’s next orchestra concert is March 9 performing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Also included in the concert is a Greek piano concerto featuring Tamara Goldstein.

By david cardenasdcarden4@mscd.edu

Photo by J. ISAAc SMALL/jsmall4@mscd.edu

Metro’s new symphony conductor Alejandro Rivas stands in the King Center concert hall on Jan 28. Rivas conducted orchestras in Ohio for five years after receiv-ing his master’s and doctorate degrees from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1999. He spends summers in his native Venezuela where he conducts symphonies, orchestras, choirs and workshops.

Kenya » Political conflicts not tribal related, elections riggedexit polls and early results were showing the winner as Odinga … they were about to announce the re-sults and suddenly everything went black.”

Shamala said Kenyans had no radio, no TV and communications were cut off for two days. “And then they came back and said Kibaki won, and the people just erupted.”

Shamala cites the European and U.S. election observers who said they had evidence of widespread irregu-larities.

Shamala said the media coverage of the situation has falsely portrayed

the fighting as ethnic rivalry. The reasons behind the conflict

are complex, going back to the co-lonial borders drawn by Europeans without regard for the people living there.

“This conflict did not start on Dec. 27 — there are also historical factors that people need to look at — this is about land, wealth and power, about the haves and the have-nots,” he said.

“If this was tribal, if they re-ally hated each other, then why were they not killing each other before?”

Shamala said to reducing this to ethnicity is to miss a very impor-tant point. The colonial structures

were designed for exploitation of the country, and when the colonial pow-ers left, those same structures were left behind and taken by the new power.

“The executive branch is too strong in Kenya,” Shamala said. “The judges are appointed by the president, and in Kenya the presi-dent’s cabinet members are often chosen from members of parliament — there is not enough division of power between the three branches of government.”

Associate professor Derrick Hud-son, who led the 2007 Metro trip to Kenya, agrees that the role of eth-nicity in the fighting was being over-

stated. “My take is that he (Odinga) rep-

resents the young — he tends to be a bit more crossing ethnic boundries representing the younger generation against the old guard, and in the end Kibaki has used ethnicity to stay in power,” Hudson said.

“Most of the power in Kenya is centered around the Central Prov-ince where Kibaki is from, and one of the main points of Odinga is to decentralize power.”

Hudson said the Kenya trip for this summer would probably not take place. The office will keep up on breaking developments, but he said he doubted it would happen.

Both professors, though they are saddened and concerned about the current situation, ended with posi-tive reflections.

“One of the very important things Kenya needs to learn is to dis-agree without resorting to violence,” he said. Hudson said that while he was disappointed, it was important to remember that democracy is new in Africa.

“In the short term, this is very bad for Kenya and its people,” Sha-mala said, “but in the long run this is a revolution and will turn out good … it may take a while but when the dust settles, whoever is president will have to think of the people.”

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