The Latin American String Collection – Cello

About this piece

Thirty short original solos by the Venezuelan violinist and teacher Mark Contreras Gómez, each written in a traditional Latin American or Caribbean style. Kendor released the collection in 2023, with matching violin and viola books. Contreras Gómez trained in Venezuela's national youth orchestra system (El Sistema) and played in the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Caracas Municipal Symphony Orchestra. He then took a pedagogy degree in Spain, where his teaching materials are used in more than 70 schools. The book is graded 1 to 3 and ordered by left-hand pattern: Open Strings, First Finger, Second Finger, Third Finger, and Fourth Finger and Chromatic Changes. The styles run from Venezuelan joropo and gaita, Cuban son, mambo and timba, Colombian cumbia and bambuco and Argentine tango to Brazilian bossa nova and choro, Dominican merengue and bachata, Chilean cueca, Paraguayan guarania, Mexican mariachi and norteña, and Jamaican and Trinidadian reggae, ska and calypso. Each solo comes with a short note on the style's history. The book itself has only the cello line. Downloadable play-along and full-performance tracks supply the accompaniment, some played by the composer and some on instruments native to the regions where the styles began.

Technical overview

Thirty one-page solos, arranged progressively. The first five (e.g. 'Buffalos & Cows', a joropo, and 'Barú', a cumbia) use open strings only, with pizzicato and simple half- and dotted-half-note rhythms. Later pieces add fingers one at a time in first position on all four strings and bring in dotted and syncopated Latin rhythms, two-note slurs, tremolo, simple double stops (ska) and, in the last section, fourth finger and chromatic notes.

Technical focus

• A String Notes
• D String Notes
• G String Notes
• C String Notes
• Pizzicato
• Dotted Rhythms
• Rhythm
• 2 Note Slurs
• Double Stops