Colombia is the best-kept travel secret in the Americas. For the past few decades, the country suffered from leftist insurgencies and cocaine cartel violence, but in recent years these groups have been driven deep into the jungle. It’s now no more dangerous to visit the capital of Bogota than it is to live in Chicago. Colombia is also well-developed, with a large middle class. One measure of its economic dynamism we found on our flight to the resort town of Cartagena (“carta-hay-nuh”): despite the global recession, Avianca’s inflight magazine had 280 ad-filled pages. “Lonely Planet: Colombia” calls it “one of the most beautiful countries in the world,” with the most biodiversity per square mile and the most bird species. It is also rich in history and culture and we decided to check it out while attending the fourth annual International Music Festival in January. Why hold it there? “Cartagena is one of the planet’s two truly magical cities, the other being Venice, of course,” explained Stephen Prutsman, the American pianist who is the artistic director of the festival. “A lot of the musicians ask to be invited back.” The colonial architecture of the 17th to 19th Century old town (a UNESCO World Heritage site) has been beautifully restored, with bougainvilleas hanging from wooden balconies, and you can spend hours just wandering through it at random. It also has a lively nightlife, with clubs and restaurants open until the wee hours. Located on the Caribbean coast, Cartagena became the collection point for all the gold and silver of the Americas to be shipped back to Spain and in order to protect the treasure, the Spanish built their largest fortress ever, the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which took 200 years to complete. With many rings of massive walls and an extensive system of tunnels, it enabled a Spanish force of 2,500 to hold off an English army 10 times its size in 1741. After a tour of the city’s highlights on our first afternoon there, the tropical breeze created the perfect atmosphere for the magic that was to follow at the initial concert. The Cartagena festival has rocketed to prominence in the classical music world during its few years because of the talent it has drawn and the brilliant programming. The 2009 version sold out months in advance. If you aren’t a classical aficionado, you should blame not the music for being inherently boring (though some is), but the programs put together by music directors who live in ivory towers entirely removed from the taste of the general public. Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for that past two decades, is a prime example, but the one good thing he did was to pick the charismatic young Venezuelan, Gustavo Dudamel, as his successor. Mozart Magic Which brings us back to Colombia which, like Venezuela, has a strong outreach to educate young musicians and develop the public’s taste for classical. Prutsman is a genius at finding the right balance between the overplayed “war horses,” the lesser-known works by the Old Masters, and modern composers (even dissonant works in moderation). The festival opened in the Teatro Adolfo Meijia, ornately decorated in Renaissance style, at 7 p.m. and was attended by luminaries such as Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the master of “magical realism” fiction, whose “Love in the Time of Cholera” was set in Cartagena, where he has a part-time home. The City of London Sinfonia first played the world premiere of “Hymn to Colombia” by the dynamic contemporary composer Francisco Zumaque. It was a superb example of combining regional music with European traditions, with the use of unusual instruments for an orchestra, like xylophone and castanets, and lots of horns (think Tchaikovsky meets Herb Alpert). It was followed by his arrangement of a mentor’s Latin classical composition, and the last work before intermission was Bartok’s “Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra No. 2.” We usually find Bartok too dissonant, but in the hands of demon violinist Robert McDuffie it was riveting. The festival was anchored by Mozart and his “Symphony No. 41 (The Jupiter),” the last one he wrote, was the perfect climax for opening night. When you hear really good Mozart, you can’t help but smile. A joyful dance between the horns, woodwinds, and strings played out as the themes built towards a magnificent climax, which received a standing ovation. At 10:30 that night, there was a free concert in a plaza, but hours before, thousands of all ages jammed the side streets to be able to hear. The Sinfonia opened with Mozart’s “Overture to The Magic Flute” and the large audience was absolutely reverent. This was followed by Suren Bagratuni’s emotional cello solo in Tchaikovsky’s wonderful “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” then the flamenco-like guitar work of Ricardo Cobo in Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” the deservedly beloved masterpiece of Spanish classical music. Afterwards, we dropped into some of the nearby salsa clubs, but were too tired to dance, though it was fun watching the night owl Colombians. Art Modern and Ancient Over the next few days we alternated concerts with shopping for handicrafts, visits to museums and churches, and lunches at restaurants serving Colombian specialties. The newly reopened Museum of Modern Art was a particular surprise, since we think most contemporary work is junk. The featured artist was Jose Antonio Suarez Londono, whose finely-detailed black-and-white drawings of famous people (Darwin, Wilde, Patti Smith) and tiny fanciful watercolors (playful cherubs) are delightful. Quite a number of the other artists are also impressive by any measure. The Gold Museum of the Zenu is stunning, featuring beautifully-designed pendants of mythical beasts, elaborate nose rings, and ritual objects, many from 2000 years ago, a period from which there is not a lot of material. A film in English tells the story of the local native cultures from prehistoric times. The 18th Century Palace of the Inquisition imaginatively displays instruments the tribunal used to extract confessions, paintings of what people imagined witches did, tools for execution of the 800 who were judged heretics, and exhibits on the slave trade that once thrived in Cartagena. There is always a challenge for music programmers to organize concerts that have both wide appeal to fill the hall and cater to the particular tastes of different audience segments. For us, what some find intimate and quiet, like a Brahms quartet or Schumann piano pieces, is simply too slow and boring. The daytime concerts favored these small ensembles and so we went selectively to those whose first half we knew we would like, ducking out at intermission. But sometimes we were surprised: Caplet’s “Conte Fantastique” turned out to be a wild, moody piece for harp based on Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” while Paert’s “Fratres for Violin, Strings, and Percussion” was powerfully sensuous. One of the best evening concerts mid-week opened with Rossini’s “Overture to The Barber of Seville,” whose distinctive French horn melody makes it immediately recognizable. This was followed by Mozart’s “Concerto for Two Pianos No. 27,” which is rarely performed because of the logistics, played with passion by Anna Polonsky and Max Levinson. The closing was Beethoven’s powerful “Symphony No. 4,” with an encore of Tchaikovsky’s fun “Slavic March.” Even if you don’t normally care for classical music, you would have been swept away by this concert. The Emerald City Another highlight of the trip was going into New Cartagena to visit one of the best private emerald museums, set in the jewelry manufacturing shop of Sociedad Joyerie Caribe (www.joyeriacaribe.com and click the British flag and Translation). Colombia is the source of 65 percent of the world’s emeralds and 90 percent of the best ones. The process of turning the raw minerals into gems that show their inner fire is an art as fascinating as that of producing top diamonds (which are much more common). Prices for jewelry in the U.S. are two-and-a-half times what they are in Colombia and the government rebates the 16 percent sales tax at the airport. One afternoon we went to a coffee tasting, since Colombia indisputably produces the world’s best coffee. Diego Caicedo Mosquera is the 23-year-old owner of a new company, Café Con Alma www.cafeconalma.com, which works with 340 family farmers to produce coffee that naturally tastes like everything from hazelnut to chocolate. Having grown up in San Francisco, he was horrified by what Americans added to their coffee (“it’s like drinking wine spritzers”). The last day was a mad rush and we had to skip everything from an interview with a plastic surgeon (Colombia has a reputation for good quality at a third of U.S. prices) to a trip to a volcano to bathe in its therapeutic mud. We arranged with Hotel San Pedro de Majagua II www.hotelmajagua.com to cruise through the Islas del Rosario, scenic mangrove islands, where we were entertained by a dolphin show at an aquarium and ate lunch (we were too lazy to snorkel, but the turquoise water looked perfect). On return, we had very relaxing massages at our hotel’s spa (worth the price of admission just for its high-tech showers) and then readied for the final concert. This opened with “St. Paul’s Suite” by Holst (best-known for “The Planets”), an upbeat composition that integrates Irish folk music melodies. It was followed by the reliably sweet Haydn, whose “Concerto for Cello No. 2” was played by Alisa Weilerstein. If there was ever a work of musical transcendence, it is Mozart’s Requiem Mass, which he was writing as he died (but not with the help of rival composer Salieri, as depicted in the movie “Amadeus”). The choir was arrayed in white, the women soloists in red and the men in black. Before it began, the conductor of the Sinfonia, Stuart Stratford, asked for a moment of silence for those who had died in the Haiti earthquake a few days earlier. The Requiem ranges from the heart-rending Lacrimosa to the powerful Rex Tremendae, which feels like the heavens are opening at the end of the world. Whatever one’s spiritual orientation, it is spine-tingling and sublime from beginning to end, a statement that out of death comes life eternal and a reminder that the greatest classical music, too, is immortal. DETAILS Getting there: Avianca, Colombia’s flagship, is one of the world’s oldest airlines and flies out of L.A. and six other U.S. cities. It takes 7.5 hours to get to Bogota, then connect for a short flight to Cartagena. Hotel: We stayed at the 5-star Hotel Charleston Santa Teresa, a restored convent www.hotelcharlestonsantateresa.com. The beds are incredibly comfortable and the location is central, but amazingly quiet. Standard rooms are $250-$400. Eats: We liked the poolside restaurant at Santa Teresa, as well as As de Copas, Plaza de Armas, El Santisimo, and Terrazas. As snacks, we always travel with Clif Bars, which provide sugarless energy for hours. Festival info: www.CartagenaMusicFestival.com Colombia info: www.Colombia.travel or www.GemaTours.com Health: We consulted with the travel medicine experts at Passport Health’s L.A. office 323/297-0700 www.passporthealthla.com (or www.passporthealth.com). Learn Spanish: Although tourism officials speak English, most Colombians don’t, so it’s helpful to learn a bit with the easiest method, the ubiquitous Rosetta Stone www.rosettastone.com Dress: Temperature in Jan. is 75-95 degrees and you can dress casually for concerts.