Ávila is named after the iconic mountain range that cradles my native city, Caracas. For centuries, these peaks have served as the city’s lungs and its most enduring muse, providing a backdrop of quiet grandeur to an often chaotic urban life. Today, as millions of Venezuelans live in exile due to the ongoing national crisis, the El Ávila massifs have transformed into a potent symbol of identity—viewed through screens and photographs with a bittersweet mixture of nostalgia, reverence, and loss.

The work is a tribute to this landscape, filtered through the musical legacy of the great Venezuelan guitarist and composer Antonio Lauro. Lauro’s elegant waltzes (valses) and spirited merengues were themselves nostalgic, looking back to the "golden age" of Caracas in the 1940s and 50s.

Musically, Ávila explores the "postcard within a postcard" effect. It weaves together the quirky, infectious 5/8 meter of the traditional Caracas merengue with a central section featuring a quiet, expressive vals. It is a nostalgic gaze through a musical lens—capturing a city rich with history, vivacity, and an eternal yearning for home.