MSU's “Latin IS America” festival seeks to combine the cultures of the Americas through music and poetry, creating new rhythms for the students of MSU’s College of Music.

Students involved in the Musique 21 orchestra performed the production “This Love” Monday night as part of the festival.

Musique 21 uses music from the 21st century, director and conducting professor Kevin Noe said, and almost all of the composers have Latin American roots.

“The whole thing weaves together a kind of narrative about love,” Noe said. “The inescapable pain and beauty of love.”

The performance included pieces done by small ensembles, an orchestra, a duet and a solo, using decisive lighting, singing and digital words to bring the show to life.

The most notable parts were that of the flutist, pianist and percussionist, Noe said.

Percussionist Alex Smith, a percussion performance and ethnomusicology master’s student, said the music requires extreme performance and contains many difficult executions as a performer.

Piano performance senior Cwen Homa, the pianist, said this was an entirely new experience for her and challenging because she was asked to play inside the piano during some of the pieces.

“I was raised as a solo classical pianist. I’ve never really done this before, so it was very exciting to do that. ... It’s just been some of the trickiest rhythm I’ve ever had to read,” Homa said.

Homa’s solo was the last piece played. and Smith had a duet with Chelsea Koziatek, the flutist.

“It reminds me of indigenous Brazilian music, lots of shakers, small percussion things, and very intricate rhythms and crazy meters,” Smith said of the duet.

Koziatek, a music performance doctoral student, said to create a seamless performance, the performers had special staging because there were no breaks in between the pieces, meaning the audience was immersed into a musical world for 60 minutes straight.

“When professor Noe does the Musique 21 performances here he ... transforms it from just a stage performance to a true experience for both the performers and the audience,” Koziatek said.

Music composition doctoral student Ivette Herryman was commissioned by Noe to compose a piece for the event to go along with a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca, which was sung aloud.

Herryman, who was surrounded by a thankful crowd after the performance, said Noe asked her to write something soulful and meaningful. She choose one poem, and wrote the music in the style of a different set of Lorca’s poems, which talk about deep song.

“I think that was the biggest challenge. I felt I had to connect with the poetry first, and after that, I think everything worked out kinda smoothly,” Herryman said.

Herryman is a Cuban international student and said the festival shows people what has become of these Latin cultures.

“I think it’s a calling to be aware of the differences that coexist in this country,” Herryman said.

The other students agree with her. Koziatek said America has pushed its colonial roots away, but now is starting to bring them back and recognize American culture comes from every country.

Homa said it’s valuable to bring foreign music to the conglomeration of America — it belongs here, just as it belongs to its home country.

Smith said the festival aims to change the idea of how people view and stereotype the word “Latin.”

“I lived in Brazil for a year, and I like the idea of thinking of South American, Central America, North America as a single unit, rather than the United States, and then everybody else.” Smith said.