Pacho Flores, together with Christian Lindberg and the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, presents his new Deutsche Grammophon recording FRACTALES. Recorded last May at the Stormen Hall in Bodo, one of the Norwegian orchestra’s headquarters, FRACTALES includes trumpet masterpieces such as Haydn and Arutunian concertos, the astonishing contemporary composition Akban Bunka by Christian Lindberg and some of the key works in Pacho’s repertoire such as his own transcription of Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs and Efraín Oscher’s arrangements of Tom Jobim’s Chega de Saudade and Piazzolla’s Oblivion.
FRACTALES is Pacho’s third recording for Deutsche Grammophon following CANTAR, recorded with the Berlin Funkhausorchester and Christian Vásquez and ENTROPÍA, with guitarist Jesús ‘Pingüino’ González. Some of the works included in this recording will be played in the tour presentation concerts in Bodo and Tromso, Norway (Haydn and Arutunian), the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (Haydn) and the ADDA Auditorium in Alicante, Spain (Lindberg).
As well as professional partners, Pacho and Christian are very good friends and FRACTALES is not their only project together. Christian, trombonist, composer and conductor, is writing a new Double Concerto for trumpet and trombone that will be premiered on March 21 and 22, 2019, with Christian conducting the Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra and Ximo Vicedo on trombone. He is also collaborating with Pacho in his Project of Shared Commissions of New Trumpet Concertos.
With regard to this project, Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño has already been premiered by the National Orchestra of Mexico and Carlos Miguel Prieto and further premieres are planned with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and José Luis Gómez in the USA, with the Hyogo PAC Orchestra and Michiyoshi Inoue in Japan and with the Oviedo Filarmonía and Lucas Macías in Spain. New concertos by Roberto Sierra, Paquito D’Rivera, Efraín Oscher and Christian Lindberg will be premiered in the coming seasons. Following FRACTALES, Pacho is already working on new recording projects.
Manuel Hernández-Silva, Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón come together again for several new premieres, this time with the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway, with which Pacho recorded his third album for Deutsche Grammophon, Fractales (2018), under the baton of Christian Lindberg. Two works by Pacho Flores will see the World premiere of their new version for full orchestra on this occasion: Musas y Resuello, a divertimento originally conceived for brass ensemble, premiered in 2021 by the Bogota Philharmonic Brass Ensemble, and Cantos y Revueltas, originally written for trumpet, Venezuelan Cuatro and strings. The latter was premiered by the same protagonists and the Real Filharmonía de Galicia in January 2018, a premiere that was recorded for the homonymous album (2019), also for the yellow label. The concerts will take place on March 16 and 17 at the Kulturhus in Tromsø and at the Stormen Konserthus in Bodø respectively, both at 7:00 p.m.
Historias de Flores y Tangos by Daniel Freiberg will be a premiere in Norway as well. Also part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts promoted by Pacho Flores, this piece has already seen its Spanish and Mexican premieres with the Oviedo Filarmonía and the Minería Symphony Orchestra conducted by their respective Music Directors, Lucas Macías and Carlos Miguel Prieto. Historias de Flores y Tangos will conclude its cycle of premieres this spring with the US Walla Walla Symphony under Yaakov Bergman. The program with the Arctic Philharmonic also includes Estancia ballet suite, by Alberto Ginastera.
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The following week, Hernández-Silva and Pacho Flores take similar roads, as one goes to Argentina to open the concert season of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic while the other goes to Chile to play with the National Symphony Orchestra. Shortly afterwards, their paths will cross again at the Galician Symphony Orchestra in a double program that includes the World premiere of Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz, together with the revival of other concerts that have already been premiered, such as the Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera, the Concierto de Otoño, by Arturo Márquez, both of which also make part of the aforementioned project of shared commissions, and Albares, the flugelhorn concerto by Pacho Flores himself.
Further coincidences will take place, since Hernández-Silva and Leo Rondón will meet again with the National Symphony of Colombia for the World premiere of Concierto del Mar, for Venezuelan Cuatro and orchestra, composed by Leo himself. Next season holds even more appointments and premieres from Sweden to Singapore and from Poland to Spain, which will be announced in due course.
Pacho Flores will be artist-in-residence of La Virée Classique (The Classical Spree) 2022, the summer festival organized by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra during the month of August. The broad presence provided by his status as artist-in-residence, with three different programs as a soloist, will allow him to also show himself as a conductor and composer, two facets that have become increasingly important in the development of his career. On August 10, on the Esplanade of the Olympic Park with the Montreal Symphony conducted by Rafael Payare, Pacho Flores will perform the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, a concerto commissioned and premiered by the Minería Symphony Orchestra (Prieto), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Hindoyan), Valencia Orchestra (Hernández-Silva) and San Diego Symphony (Payare).
On August 13, at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Pacho will play and conduct a brass and percussion ensemble with a program featuring works by Copland and Joan Tower, originals for that group, as well as Musas y Resuello, by Pacho himself, along with others by Gershwin, Sarasate, PIazzolla and another of Pacho’s works, Labios Vermelhos, arranged for this format also by Pacho Flores himself. In this concert he will have the participation as a guest soloist of Paul Merkelo, OFM’s principal trumpeter. And finally on August 14, again at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe and under the baton of Rafael Payare conducting the Ensemble de la Virée (Ensemble made up of 15 string instrumentalists: winners of the OSM Competition, CMIM, members of the OSM and the Obiora ensemble and guest soloists), Pacho will play Piazzolla’s Revirado and his own work Cantos y Revueltas, for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings. Therefore, three concerts as a soloist, one of them also as conductor and three works of his authorship plus the arrangements of another three is the balance of his presence as resident artist in the 2022 edition of this Virée Classique.
He will then travel to Mexico for the American premiere, together with the Minería Symphony and Carlos Miguel Prieto, of Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, co-commissioned by Minería itself, the Oviedo Filarmonía (Macías), Arctic Philharmonic (Hernández-Silva) and Walla Walla Symphony (Bergman), and for the presentation of his most recent recording on Deutsche Grammophon, ESTIRPE, recorded precisely with Minería and Prieto in August 2019 and which includes the Concierto de Otoño, by Arturo Márquez, Latin American Chronicles by Daniel Freiberg, Concerto Venezolano by D’Rivera, Mestizo by Efraín Oscher and a short piece by Pacho himself, the Venezuelan waltz, Morocota. This is Pacho’s fifth recording for Deutsche Grammophon after Cantar, Entropía, Fractales, and Cantos y Revueltas.
The US premiere of Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, will take place next February 25 and 26 at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa and the San Diego Civic Theatre, respectively, and on March 2 at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs, with trumpeter Pacho Flores and the San Diego Symphony conducted by Rafael Payare. After the premieres of Concerto Venezolano in Mexico (Orquesta de Minería under Carlos Miguel Prieto), the United Kingdom (Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan) and Spain (Orquesta de Valencia under Hernández-Silva), this US premiere with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare puts an end to the round of premieres by the orchestras that participated in the shared commission. During his stay in San Diego, Pacho Flores will also offer a chamber music recital with musicians from the orchestra.
The concerts of this project of shared commissions are specifically written for the extraordinary conditions of Pacho Flores and the varied instruments provided by the Valencian house STOMVI, which has developed new four-piston prototypes in new keys that greatly expand the tessitura and range of colors and timbres of this instrument, and, therefore, also the expressive possibilities it offers to the soloist. As an example, this is the list of instruments that would be needed to face the complete cycle of new concerts: Trumpets in B flat, C and D, cornets in F, B flat and E flat, soprano cornets in F, G and A, and, of course, a flugelhorn in B flat, which is, at the express request of Pacho, present in all of these new works.
Pacho Flores with Vicente Honorato, General Director of STOMVI
An important detail to highlight about this project is that these works remain permanently in Pacho’s repertoire. Márquez’s concert, for example, has had further premieres in Poland, Colombia, France, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic after the first premieres by the orchestras that participated in the initial commission, and has been programmed especially in the US (Louisiana, Colorado, Maine, Buffalo, Ohio), Spain (Galicia, Navarra, Cordoba) or Chile, with a total of more than 30 performances in just four years, and this in the midst of a global pandemic. The Concerto Venezolano will be soon performed in Spain by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Prieto) and the Gran Canaria Philharmonic (Hernández-Silva), and in France by the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine with Hernández-Silva, as well as in future seasons in the US, Sweden and again in Spain.
D. Freiberg, A. Márquez, P. D’Rivera, P. Flores and C. M. Prieto during the recording of Mestizo for Deutsche Grammophon
The Concerto Venezolano was recorded the same week of its premiere in Mexico in 2019, together with that of Arturo Márquez and two other concerts by composers who also participate in this project —not the works belonging to the project but rather previous ones: Concierto Mestizo de Efraín Oscher, premiered a decade ago (Caracas, 2010) with Bolívar and Hindoyan, and Crónicas Latinoamericanas by Daniel Freiberg, which is really an adaptation for trumpets of a concert originally written for clarinet by Paquito D’Rivera and premiered by the WDR Funkhausorchester and Wayne Marshall. The trumpet version was premiered by the Het Gelders Orkest from the Netherlands, conducted by Christian Vásquez. The release of this album was delayed by the pandemic, but it will finally be presented in the summer of 2022 and will be the 6th in Pacho’s discography (the 5th for Deutsche Grammophon) after Cantar (2016), Entropía (2017), Fractales ( 2018) and Cantos y revueltas (2019). Pacho also appears as a guest soloist on several of Christian Lindberg’s recordings and acts as producer and conductor on the album Egregore, by trumpeter Fabio Brum for Naxos.
Despite the cancellations and delays due to the pandemic, Pacho Flores has been able to keep pace with the premieres of the new trumpet concerts within the project of shared commissions that he has been promoting over the last five years. Since the premiere of Arturo Marquez’s Concierto de Otoño on September 2018 by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México and Carlos Miguel Prieto, 12 of the 21 foreseen premieres of this project have already taken place. The premiere of Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, last 23 October, is the half-way mark on the premiere calendar, which will receive a great boost—should Omicron allow it—in 2022, in which we will see the last premieres of Paquito D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezonano (Spain and US) and Roberto Sierra’s Salseando (Brasil and France), as well as Daniel Freiberg’s second premiere.
The program also includes Cantos y Revueltas: Fantasia Concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, by Pacho Flores, and the Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, by Jan Sibelius
This concert also means the debut of Manuel Hernández-Silva with the Valencia Orchestra, one of the Spanish few with which he had not yet worked. Hernández-Silva has held four tenures as Principal Conductor in our country: Murcia Region Symphony, Cordoba Orchestra, Malaga Philharmonic and Navarra Symphony Orchestra, and has become the conductor with more presence in this project, with three premieres in Spain and three others in France, Norway and Sweden.
Cantos y Revueltas was premiered with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Hernández-Silva and Leo Rondón in January 2018 on a concert tour in Galicia, whose live recording gave rise to a double CD/DVD for Deutsche Grammophon. Since then, it has been often performed in Spain (Murcia, Malaga, Navarra, Extremadura) and it has already been premiered in the US, Mexico, Colombia and the United Kingdom. After this concert in Valencia, it is scheduled in Norway and Sweden. Cantos y Revueltas is actually a double concert in which the Venezuelan cuatro has a leading role, to whose development Leo Rondón, the soloist who premiered and recorded it, played a great part, and who will also be present in Valencia.
The Concerto Venezolano is a commission by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería (Mexico), the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (UK), the Orquesta de València (Spain) and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra (USA)
After the premieres of Concierto Venezolano in Mexico (Orquesta de Minería under Carlos Miguel Prieto) and the United Kingdom (Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan), this third premiere in Valencia with Hernández-Silva will be the continental European premiere that precedes the end of the cycle two weeks later with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare in the US. The concerts of this project of shared commissions are specifically written for the extraordinary conditions of Pacho Flores and the varied instruments provided by the Valencian house STOMVI, which has developed new four-piston prototypes in new keys that greatly expand the tessitura and range of colors and timbres of this instrument, and, therefore, also the expressive possibilities it offers to the soloist. As an example, this is the list of instruments that would be needed to face the complete cycle of new concerts: Trumpets in B flat, C and D, cornets in F, B flat and E flat, soprano cornets in F, G and A, and, of course, a flugelhorn in B flat, which is, at the express request of Pacho, present in all of these new works.
Pacho Flores with Vicente Honorato, General Director of STOMVI
This premiere is part of a project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts by important composers such as Arturo Márquez, Roberto Sierra, Christian Lindberg, Daniel Freiberg, Efraín Oscher and D’Rivera himself.
An important detail to highlight about this project is that these works remain permanently in Pacho’s repertoire. Márquez’s concert, for example, has had further premieres in Poland, Colombia, France, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic after the first premieres by the orchestras that participated in the initial commission, and has been programmed especially in the USA (Louisiana, Colorado, Maine, Buffalo, Ohio) ,Spain (Galicia, Navarra, Cordoba) or Chile, with a total of more than 30 performances in just four years, and this in the midst of a global pandemic.
D. Freiberg, A. Márquez, P. D’Rivera, P. Flores and C. M. Prieto during the recording of Mestizo for Deutsche Grammophon
The Concerto Venezolano was recorded the same week of its premiere in Mexico in 2019, together with that of Arturo Márquez and two other concerts by composers who also participate in this project —not the works belonging to the project but rather previous ones: Concierto Mestizo de Efraín Oscher, premiered a decade ago (Caracas, 2010) with Bolívar and Hindoyan, and Crónicas Latinoamericanas by Daniel Freiberg, which is really an adaptation for trumpets of a concert originally written for clarinet by Paquito D’Rivera and premiered by the WDR Funkhausorchester and Wayne Marshall. The trumpet version was premiered by the Het Gelders Orkest from the Netherlands, conducted by Christian Vásquez. The release of this album was delayed by the pandemic, but it will finally be presented in the summer of 2022 and will be the 6th in Pacho’s discography—the 5th for Deutsche Grammophon—, after Cantar (2016), Entropía (2017), Fractales ( 2018) and Cantos y revueltas (2019). Pacho also appears as a guest soloist on several of Christian Lindberg’s recordings and acts as producer and conductor on the album Egregore, by trumpeter Fabio Brum for Naxos.
