(Above: Conductor and artistic director David Amado made his formal debut with the Oregon Mozart Players on Oct. 18, 2025.)

By Daniel Buckwalter

The Oregon Mozart Players opened their 2025-26 season on Saturday, Oct. 18, at Beall Concert Hall on the University of Oregon campus with the Nomad & Native program — and fan clubs from everywhere, it seemed, showed up.

There was violinist Sunmi Chang, mezzo-soprano Ágnes Vojtkó, and the well-known and deeply-beloved flamenco dancer Martita Santiago, all with their firm and growing roots in the Eugene community, and all in top-notch form before an adoring audience.

Under the direction of David Amado — making his formal debut as OMP’s conductor and artistic director — the orchestra opened with an eerily calm piece, Elegia Andina by composer Gabriela Lena Frank, which features a wonderful flute-oboe duet (Jill Pauls and Cheryl Wefler).

Then came Chang, an instructor at the UO School of Music and Dance who has performed throughout the U.S. and world and has played with OMP.

As always, her elegance and magnificence shone. She was simply commanding throughout the three-movement Violin Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Prokofiev, much to the delight of the audience that gave her a standing ovation.

What drew my interest most came during intermission when Chang, holding flowers, was joined in a room by a sizable contingent of family and friends, all of them ecstatic with the performance. They gathered for a group photo taken on an iPhone, and I wonder if all of them made it in the picture. It was heartwarming to see.

After intermission came the music from the Spanish ballet El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla, first performed in 1915. It’s the story of a gypsy woman, Candela, who is haunted by her dead husband’s ghost. The plot involves Candela performing a ritual to break free from the ghost, allowing her to be with her new love.

For the Mozart Players’ performance, it featured Vojtkó and Santiago. The Hungarian-born and internationally-known Vojtkó is familiar with Eugene, having performed with Eugene Opera (Flora in La Traviata), and the audience adored her presence and supremely rich voice Saturday night.

The most heartrending performance was a short dance in El Amor Brujo by the 81-year-old Santiago. It also produced a standing ovation from the audience after Santiago concluded her short piece. True, the ovation from Santiago’s fans stopped the music in its tracks, but Amado didn’t seem to mind. There was love everywhere for this woman.

Born in 1944 in New York City’s Spanish Harlem and a first-generation Puerto Rican, Santiago has been in Eugene the longest — since 1960 — and has established the deepest of roots. She has run the flamenco studio Eugene Flamenco Arts By Martita Santiago on West 11th Avenue since 2011, after a previous studio, Bailar Dance Studio, closed.

In Eugene, she and her husband raised a family of eight children, welcomed a passel of grandchildren and spoken in a handful of interviews through the years about how much more inclusive Eugene has become.

Santiago has danced throughout the world, for charity events, the USO, for wounded soldiers at San Francisco’s Letterman Hospital, even for President John F. Kennedy, always with the fiery passion and love for Spanish and Caribbean dance.

The entire night was a delight, and here’s hoping much more is to come for the Oregon Mozart Players.