Marina Heredia will sing at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival next Saturday, August 2nd, accompanied by some of her regular collaborators: José Quevedo ‘Bolita’ on guitar and Roberto Jaén on percussion. Once again, they are special guests of Avi Avital and his Between Worlds Ensemble. The program features arrangements of classical compositions by Falla, Albéniz, and Granados, along with flamenco and other popular music pieces, in new arrangements created especially for the project, premiered at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin in November 2022 and has been released on Deutsche Grammophon this past June 2025.
Mandolinist Avi Avital has long enjoyed crossing musical borders. Between Worlds is an exploration of different genres, cultures, and musical worlds: at the center of the project is the Between Worlds Ensemble, founded by Avital in 2014 and made up of ten classically trained musicians equally at home in non-classical repertoire. For each of the three Between Worlds programs, this core group has been joined by several artists or an ensemble representing a specific cultural and geographical region from around the world, in programs that include classical pieces as well as traditional and folk music in newly created arrangements. “The feeling of being at home in places that seem strange and even discovering aspects of oneself is an idea I find very moving,” says Avital. “That philosophy is at the heart of this project.” To open the series, Marina Heredia, one of the most fascinating voices in flamenco today, joins the Between Worlds Ensemble, alongside José Quevedo “Bolita” and Roberto Jaén in a program dedicated to the music of the Iberian Peninsula.
Marina Heredia has become the most sought-after singer internationally to perform repertoires that combine flamenco with classical music and other musical styles, both popular and folk, in which she moves like a fish in water. Among her most notable projects is En Libertad. El Camino de los Gitanos (In Freedom. The Way of the Gypsies), a new work commissioned by the Duisburger Philharmoniker from José Quevedo and Joan Albert Amargós, which premiered with the commissioner in 2023, was revived in Spain by the Galicia Symphony Orchestra in 2024, and is already scheduled for September 18th with the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada and in 2026 with the Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra. Her upcoming engagements include invitations to sing Falla’s El Amor Brujo with the San Diego and Philadelphia Orchestras.
Perry So conducts the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal next Sunday and Monday, 10 and 11 May, in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal with a programme including Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, Stravinsky’s Symphony in three movements and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61. This is Perry’s second visit to Germany so far this year following his appearance before the Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz this past January when he conducted a very French programme with works by Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and Mozart’s Paris Symphony.
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He received a BA in literature from Yale University with a major in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, during which time he founded an academic orchestra and conducted the university’s opera company. He studied conducting initially with James Sinclair and later with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 Perry was awarded First Prize and Special Prize at the 5th St. Petersburg Prokofiev International Conducting Competition. Following this recognition he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Department of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently music director of the Sinfónica de Navarra and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Perry So has made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, as well as his European operatic debut with the Royal Danish Opera and The Magic Flute. Highlights include a tour to Italy with the Nuremberg Symphony and a seven-week tour of South Africa conducting three different orchestras in Verdi’s Requiem. Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the symphony orchestras of Navarra, Malaga, Tenerife, Nuremberg, Israel, New Zealand, Houston, Detroit, New Jersey and Shanghai, the London, Szezcin, Seoul and China Philharmonics, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz. In 2013 he toured the Balkan Peninsula conducting the Zagreb Philharmonic in the first series of cultural exchanges established after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Perry So’s work in the recording studio encompasses a wide range of 20th century British, French and Russian music with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his album of Barber and Korngold Violin Concertos with Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic received the Diapason d’Or in 2012. His wide-ranging musical interests include numerous world premieres on four continents, as well as the reintroduction of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire into symphonic programmes, notably championing the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau. His work with young musicians has taken him to the Australian Youth Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Round Top Festival, the Manhattan School of Music, the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and the Yale School of Music.
Marina Heredia participates in the New York Flamenco Festival with a programme entitled De lo jondo a Lorca that includes a selection of poems and songs that Lorca immortalised in his works, mixing the intensity of flamenco with the poetic lyricism of the author. Accompanied by her inseparable guitarist José Quevedo ‘El Bolita’, Marina transports the audience to the deepest roots of Andalusian culture, reliving the legacy of the poet from Granada with every note and verse. The concert will take place on Friday 14 March in the Merkin Concert Hall of the Kaufman Music Center at 8pm. Marina has just had an outstanding presence at the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia where he gave three concerts, two with the Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra and Thierry Fisher with programmes covering works by Falla and Lorca as well as with his flamenco quintet.
Marina Heredia is definitely the most internationally demanded singer for this repertoire, just in the last two seasons she could be seen at the Konzerthaus and the Berlin Philharmonie with the Berlin Radio Symphony conducted by Pablo Heras Casado; the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, in the Laieszhalle of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, or the Lausitz Festival in Görlitz, and has sung with orchestras of the importance of the Chicago Symphony or San Francisco Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, of which she was resident artist and with which she premiered in Spain En Libertad!, a new work for cantaora and orchestra by José Quevedo and Joan Albert Amargós, commissioned and premiered by the Duisburger Philharmoniker.
Other important orchestras which Marina has sung with are the Orchestre National de Lille, Orquestra Sinfônica da Casa da Música do Porto, Ópera de Rouen, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom she recorded El Amor Brujo under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado or the production by La Fura del Baus for the Granada Festival as well as with the Sinfónicas de Navarra under the baton of Perry So, Sinfónica de RTVE, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia with Roberto Forés, North Macedonian Philharmonic with Christian Vásquez or Sinfónica de Castilla y León under the baton of José Trigueros and Thierry Fisher. Among the upcoming engagements it highlights the concert with the San Diego Symphony in the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park under the baton of Rafael Payare.
Leo Rondón makes his debut with the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla to participate on 6 and 7 March in two concertante works of a markedly Latin character with Hernández-Silva and Pacho Flores, with whom he regularly collaborates. These works are Concerto Venezolano for trumpet and orchestra by Paquito D’Rivera, winner of a Latin Grammy, and Cantos y Revueltas. Fantasía Concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and Orchestra, by the trumpeter himself, in whose recording for Deutsche Grammophon Leo also participates. The concerts will take place at the Teatro de la Maestranza at 20:00.
Leo comes from Poland to play his own Concierto del Mar, for Venezuelan cuatro with the Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra of Gdansk conducted by Christian Vásquez, and will soon be seen at the Auditori de Barcelona with the Banda Municipal de Barcelona again playing in Cantos y Revueltas conducted by Pascual Vilaplana. Previously he could also be seen with the Duisburger Philharmoniker conducted by Alondra de la Parra and this season he can still be seen again in Spain playing the Concierto del Mar with the Orquesta de Extremadura and Silva.
Following the premiere of his Concierto del Mar, Rondón is now completing the composition of a new concerto for four and orchestra entitled Concierto del Llano, which will be the second in a trilogy. He will also continue his work in the artistic organisation of the PAAX GNP Festival, chaired by Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra, which will take place again in June 2025 in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. He continues to work with maestro Alexis Cárdenas and his quartet, and with a duo with French pianist Thomas Enhco, with whom he released an album together with Chilean tenor Emiliano González Toro, in homage to singer Violeta Parra. Known as Leo Rondón, Leonidas Rondón (Guama, Yaracuy, 1984), who was an outstanding podium participant in the Festival La Siembra del Cuatro in Venezuela, has collaborated with the Quatuor Debussy, Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata and the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. Also with orchestras such as the Arctic Philharmonic of Norway, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Orquesta de Valencia, Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Orquesta de Extremadura, Sinfónica de Navarra, Sinfónica del Vallés or Filarmónica de Málaga. For years he organised, together with maestro Cristóbal Soto, the summer course Música Criolla Venezolana, a Venezuelan music teaching camp in the city of Mirecourt, France. He is currently working on his solo project, Leo Rondón Project.
Perry So conducts this week the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra in a very interesting programme combining the work of the Navarrese Fernando Remacha (1898-1984), Jesus Christ on the Cross, with Bruckner’s 6th Symphony, for which he has assembled a cast formed by the soprano Andrea Jiménez, contralto Leticia Vergara, tenor Guillen Munguía, bass Iosu Yeregui and the Coral de Cámara de Pamplona. The concerts will take place on February 27th in the Baluarte Auditorium in Pamplona and on the 28th in the Teatro Gaztambide in Tudela, both days at 19:3 pm.
Perry So conducted the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie past 19 January in the Hunsrückhalle in Simmern with a programme including Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 Paris, the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Allegro appassionato for piano and orchestra, Op. 70 by Saint-Saëns, with pianist Anny Hwang as soloist, and Francis Poulenc’s Sinfonietta. Shortly afterwards he conducted Verdi’s La Traviata at the Baluarte in Pamplona and the Kursaal of San Sebastián in a production by the Sferisterio de Macerata and in short he will conduct the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal. A dynamic and transformative presence in concert halls on five continents, Perry So is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra and Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Navarre Symphony Orchestra has toured to critical acclaim, widely lauded for the “artistic vitality” of its programming, and the ensemble, Spain’s oldest orchestra, recognized as currently being at “one of the finest points in its history.”
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He received a BA in Literature from Yale University with a major in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, during which time he founded an academic orchestra and conducted the university’s opera company. He studied conducting initially with James Sinclair and later with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 he received the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Edition of the International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St. Petersburg. Following this recognition he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and member of the Department of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music.
