It’s no big deal.”Įventually she met Ma, who later invited her to join his Silk Road Ensemble. “Green is really the color of Galicia, and green is really the color of my village,” Pato told the New York Times. “I was trying to just tell people, this is what I am, and it's not like I don't care about what you think about what I do with my instrument, but there is something about what I do with my instrument that keeps me going.” For her second album, she turned more eclectic and soon was bestowed with the Jimi Hendrix nickname - in part because she dyed her hair green in homage to her homeland. A natural at improvisation, Pato needed to make her own kind of music.
In Galicia, the bagpipes remain deeply steeped in tradition. I feel indebted to all of them.”Īfter moving to the United States, where she studied classical piano, Pato continued to feel the pull of folkloric music and the gaita (footnote: in Latin America, especially Colombia, gaita is the name for a traditional flute). The women of my life, the women I admire, gave me the strength and the resilience to pursue my path in whatever I felt passionate about. I always felt that I was incredibly lucky to have all those references at home. We were just people doing what we loved doing. “Growing up, in my mind and in my home, there wasn't such a thing as a female something. “And I am the youngest of four sisters, and everything I have become is because they were there before me. Her family consisted of 10 sisters and two brothers, but only six of them survived childhood - six sisters,” she said in an interview with NPR.
Pato credits her female family members for leading her to the gaita. (Pato performed at those concerts as well.) After intermission at Ravinia, Alsop will lead the CSO in Bernstein's Kaddish Symphony. Other soloists featured in the work are Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh, David Krakauer on klezmer clarinet and Michael Ward-Bergeman on hyper-accordion.Ĭommissioned by the CSO, Rose of the Winds received its world premiere in 2007, with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble joining the CSO, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. The program is part of Ravinia's Breaking Barriers Festival, which Alsop curated and which celebrates diverse artists and leaders in classical music today. At 19, she became a world-music sensation with the release of her debut solo album “Tolemia” (1999) - the first ever by a female gaita player.Īt the Ravinia Festival, Pato will join a group of guest soloists for Golijov's Rose of the Winds (2007) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop on July 30. From childhood, Pato has played the gaita, following the example of her three older sisters and her mother. She performs on the gaita, or Galician bagpipes. Though once nicknamed “the Jimi Hendrix of the bagpipes,” Cristina Pato always has taken a female focus.īorn in Galicia, an autonomous community in northwestern Spain, Pato specializes in the region's traditional folk music, inspired by the area's ancient Celtic history.