Pacho Flores, premiere and recording in Sweden

Pacho Flores, premiere and recording in Sweden

Pacho Flores travels to Sweden for the premiere of the trumpet concerto Caballos Mágicos, by Christian Lindberg, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, as well as for the recording of an album with works by Lindberg for European Grammophon. Along with this new piece, the recording includes Un Sueño Morisco, double concerto for trumpet and trombone that was commissioned and premiered by the ORTVE with Pacho Flores, Ximo Vicedo on the trombone and Lindberg as conductor. Lindberg will on this occasion perform again not only as conductor but also as trombonist.

This concert, which got its premiere in Spain with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, is part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts to prominent composers launched by Pacho Flores and managed by his international agency ACM Concerts. The composers who have taken part in the first two rounds of commissions are Arturo Márquez, Paquito D’Rivera, Roberto Sierra, Efraín Oscher, Daniel Freiberg and Lindberg himself, and there is a third round in preparation now. The orchestras that have been involved in the different joint commissions and premieres are the National Symphony of Mexico, Tucson Symphony, Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan, Oviedo Filarmonía, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquesta de Minería, Valencia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine or the Arctic Philharmonic; and the conductors who have or are going to participate in these premieres are Carlos Miguel Prieto, José Luis Gómez, Michiyoshi Inoue, Lucas Macías, Domingo Hindoyan, Manuel Hernández-Silva, Rafael Payare, Paul Daniel and Christian Lindberg. Several of these concerts have already been recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Pacho Flores, premiere and recording in Sweden

The contribution of this project to the expansion of the trumpet repertoire has had no equal in the history of the instrument. This, together with the technological evolution of new four-piston prototypes in new keys that Pacho Flores is carrying out with the help of the Spanish manufacturer STOMVI, his intense educational activity, the recording legacy he is producing —in which he alternates the great classical works for the trumpet with this new exclusive repertoire— and, naturally, his unbeatable musical and technical conditions, makes Pacho Flores the most influential classical trumpeter in history. To these premieres must also be added the concerts that many other composers dedicate to Pacho on their own initiative, as well as those he has himself composed, such as Cantos y Revueltas, or what is possibly the first flugelhorn concerto ever written.


 

 

 

New world premiere by Pacho Flores in the United Kingdom

New world premiere by Pacho Flores in the United Kingdom

Trumpeter Pacho Flores will perform at the world premiere of a new trumpet concert next Monday, September 20 at 19:30 at the Barbican Center in London, United Kingdom. This premiere is the result of a commission, inspired by Pacho Flores himself, from Peter Ash, artistic director of the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, to Eleanor Alberga, an Afro-Caribbean composer (Kingston, Jamaica, 1949) of British nationality and residence.

Eleanor Alberga is a highly regarded British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and the Royal Opera at Covent Garden. After studying piano and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she began a career as a pianist which was then redirected to composition when she arrived at the London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1978. After leaving the LCDT, she was able to focus entirely on composing, and since then the interest in her music has only increased. In 2015 her work ARISE, ATHENA!, commissioned by the PROMS for the opening of the Last Night, consolidated her international reputation as a composer of enormous talent and originality. Alberga has won several awards, including a NESTA Scholarship in 2000 and a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019. In 2020 she was elected member of the Royal Academy of Music and in 2021 she received the Order of the British Empire for her services to music.

Pacho Flores sunrise apaisada deutsche grammophon

This new world premiere is, once again, the first of many to come for Pacho Flores along this 2021/22 season. He will afterwards perform the Swedish premiere of Caballos Mágicos, a trumpet concert by trombonist, conductor and composer Christian Lindberg, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the composer himself at the podium. This piece had its world premiere last May in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) together with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and its principal conductor Paul Daniel. During his stay in Sweden, Pacho will participate in the recording of an album with works by Lindberg, including this same concert as well as Un Sueño Morisco, a double concerto for trumpet and trombone commissioned and premiered by the ORTVE, with Ximo Vicedo on the trombone and the composer as conductor. In October, Pacho will premiere Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, with the Oviedo Filarmonía and Lucas Macías. In November, he will return to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Domingo Hindoyan for the British premieres of Concierto venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, and Pacho’s own work Cantos y Revueltas, in which he will be accompanied by the cuatrista Leo Rondón. Later on, in February 2022, he will perform the Spanish and US premiere of Paquito D’Rivera’s concert, with the San Diego Symphony under Rafael Payare and the Valencia Orchestra under Hernández-Silva, respectively; and between March and April the Brazilean premiere of Roberto Sierra’s concert Salseando, with the Sinfónica do Estado de São Paulo and Carlos Miguel Prieto, which will then see its French premiere in June with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine and Manuel Hernández-Silva. After this, Pacho will return to Spain to premiere Concierto Mambí, by Igmar Alderete, with the Córdoba Orchestra and its principal conductor, Domínguez-Nieto.


 

 

 

Hernández-Silva and Marina Heredia with the ORTVE at the Úbeda Festival

Hernández-Silva and Marina Heredia with the ORTVE at the Úbeda Festival

Manuel Hernández-Silva and Marina Heredia are again working together, this time with the Spanish Radio Television Orchestra (ORTVE) at the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza Ciudad de Úbeda, in which they will perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla at the bullring of Úbeda next Saturday, September 18, at 22:00. The program of this concert also includes El Sombrero de Tres Picos, Suite No. 1 by Falla, Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo with guitarist Juan Manuel Cañizares, and Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez.

Manuel Hernández-Silva and Marina Heredia had already performed El Amor Brujo together at the International Festival of Music and Dance of Granada in 2015, where they did a staged version by La Fura dels Baus at the bullring of Granada. Marina Heredia has become the most demanded Spanish singer to perform this iconic piece by Falla, as well as Spanish music in general. After this performance at the Úbeda Festival with Hernández-Silva, she will appear with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Pablo Heras-Casado in two emblematic halls of the German capital such as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, and later with the Orchestra da Casa da Música do Porto (Portugal) under Stefan Blunier. She has previously performed El Amor Brujo with ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony and the Orchestre National de Lille (France) in venues such as the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Teatro Real in Madrid or the Opéra de Rouen, and she has also recorded this work with Pablo Heras-Casado for Harmonia Mundi. Marina’s latest album, ‘CAPRICHO’, is also being presented these days.

Hernández-Silva y Marina Heredia con ORTVE en el Festival de Úbeda

Hernández-Silva and Marina Heredia at a rehearsal of El Amor Brujo

Hernández-Silva, who conducted this same piece with the ORTVE at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid almost exactly one year ago, will meet again with the orchestra next month to conduct Brahms’ Requiem as part of the subscription concerts of the ORTVE. This season will also bring him to work with ensembles such as the ADDA Simfònica of Alicante, Orquesta de Córdoba, Orquesta de Valencia, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Nacional de Chile, Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine or the Arctic Philharmonic. Important premieres will take place in several of these concerts, such as the Stabat Mater by Moreno Buendía (Murcia), or the trumpet concerts by Paquito D’Rivera (Valencia), Roberto Sierra (Bordeaux) and Daniel Freiberg (Norway), together with the trumpeter Pacho Flores.


 

 

 

Christian Vásquez with the Medellin Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Vásquez with the Medellin Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Vásquez conducts the Medellin Philharmonic Orchestra next Saturday, September 4, at the Metropolitan Theater of this Colombian city. The program includes Mussorgsky’s Intermezzo in modo classico, Mozart’s Clarinet concerto with Felipe Jiménez, and Bizet’s Symphony in C. The concert is part of a four-week residence within the selection process for a principal conductor that the orchestra is currently carrying out. Throughout this month-long residence, Christian Vásquez will conduct four concerts of different character and varied programs.

The next concert will take place on Friday 10 September at the Parroquia de San Juan Apóstol in Medellin with ensembles from the various sections of the Medellin Philharmonic—strings, wood, brass and percussion—. Vásquez will conduct works by Donizetti, Gounod, Wagner, Copland, Jorge Humberto Pinzón or Pacho Flores.

Christian Vásquez Medellin Philharmonic

©Takafumi Ueno

The following week, on Friday, September 17, Christian will conduct a popular program at the Theater of the University of Medellin as part of the social and community activities of the Philharmonic, which will include some of the most popular soundtracks of the last years by composers such as John Williams, Henry Mancini, Hans Zimmer, Lalo Schifrin, Howard Shore, Monty Norman or Ramin Djawadi. Christian’s residence will finish on Sunday, September 26 with an educational concert that aims to take the audience on a journey from Spain to various Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina and finally Colombia, through works by Ruperto Chapí, Gerónimo Giménez, Rafael Hernández, Pérez Prado, Miguel Matamoros, Alberto Nepomuceno, Antonio Estévez, Lucho Bermúdez or Miguel Ángel Martín.

Christian Vásquez is Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, which he led on an important tour around Europe that took them to perform in London, Lisbon, Toulouse, Munich, Stockholm and Istanbul. Vásquez has also been Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest in The Netherlands and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.