Michael Daugherty’s “Desi”: Reawakening the Latin Big Band
Vivid cultural allusions abound in the music of Michael Daugherty (b. 1954), an American composer famous for his five-movement Metropolis Symphony, inspired by the Superman comics. Daugherty’s Desi is an exuberant romp for symphonic band, composed in 1991. Its conversing instrumental “characters,” at once spirited, comic, and menacing, sweep us into a dangerous and exhilarating party. It’s easy to imagine ghosts from the audience of Desi Arnaz’ Hollywood big band reawakening and forming …