Manuel Hernández-Silva returns to Valencia on November 3 to conduct the fifth subscription concert of the Orquesta de Valencia, with which he made his debut just nine months ago. This concert, which is also part of the II Iturbi Piano Festival, will take place at the Teatro Principal, and brings together soloists Carlos Apellániz, piano; Diego Ares, harpsichord; Claudio Carbó, piano; Maria Linares, piano; Oscar Oliver, piano; Antonio Simón, fortepiano and piano; and Xavier Torres, piano, to tackle a repertoire that includes: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for four keyboards and orchestra in A minor, BWV 1065; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Concerto for three pianos and orchestra in F major, KV 242; Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Concerto for harpsichord, fortepiano and orchestra in E flat major, H 479; Franz Liszt’s Totentanz. Danse Macabre, S 126; and Sergei Prokofiev’s Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 4, in B flat major for the left hand, Op. 53.
Manuel Hernández-Silva closed last season with significant debuts in orchestras such as the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine and the Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, important premieres such as Stabat Mater by Moreno Buendía, or Salseando, by Roberto Sierra and Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’ Rivera, both with Pacho Flores as soloist. He also returned to orchestras such as the Gran Canaria Philharmonic, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic or the Colombian National Symphony Orchestra.
At the beginning of this season, Manuel Hernández-Silva keeps the pulse with debuts at the Bogotá Sacred Music Festival or the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, followed throughout the season with the Tucson Symphony in the USA, the Orchestre National du Pays de la Loire in France, the Arctic Philharmonic in Norway or the Galician Symphony in Spain. He will also return to the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chilean National Philharmonic or the Colombian National Philharmonic, in addition to projects with young people, so dear to him, such as the Musikene Orchestra and the Galician Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Pacho Flores makes his debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (New York) under the direction of its Music Director JoAnn Falletta with a program that includes Haydn’s trumpet concerto and Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño. The concerts will take place on October 28 and 29 at the Kleinhans Music Hall in the city of Buffalo. This is the first stop on a brief US tour that will also take him to New Hampshire and California, with Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño as a kind of common thread.
In New Hampshire, he will stop at the Hopkins Center for the Arts of Dartmouth College, in the city of Hanover, to present, together with the Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble, the world premiere of his own work Cantos y Revueltas as well as of the Concierto de Otoño, both in arrangement for symphonic band. The first piece, in which he will be accompanied by Venezuelan cuatro player Héctor Molina, will be conducted by Brian E. Messier, and the second by Luis Manuel Sánchez. The concert will take place on November 1 at the Spaulding Auditorium.
He will then travel to California for his third debut on this tour, this time with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Carlos Miguel Prieto, with which he will again perform Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño at the Davis Symphony Hall on November 5. The Concierto de Otoño, commissioned by the National Orchestra of Mexico, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the Hyogo Pac Orchestra of Japan and the Oviedo Filarmonía, is part of Pacho’s latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, ESTIRPE, together with Paquito D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezolano, Concierto Mestizo by Efraín Oscher and Crónicas Latinoamericanas by Daniel Freiberg, in addition to Morocota, a brief Venezuelan waltz by Pacho himself, recorded with Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería.
Manuel Hernández-Silva has assembled a team of Spanish-Venezuelan musicians along with Pacho Flores and Jesús ‘Pingüino’ González, for his debut with the Cyprus National Symphony Orchestra. The first part of the concert is dedicated to the traditional repertoire with a Symphony No. 6 by Franz Schubert to give rise in the second to a Latin festival around the trumpet in which a good part of the repertoire is by Pacho Flores himself and includes Heteronimos, a brief concertino for trumpet based on the different voices created by the Portuguese Fernando Pessoa for his literary expression; the Aria-cantinela of the Bachiana Brasileira nº 5 by Villalobos; Revirado, by Piazzolla; and Cantos y Revueltas. Fantasia Concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan Cuatro and strings, again by the trumpeter himself.
Cantos y Revueltas is the first work for orchestra composed by Pacho Flores and was premiered with Manuel Hernández-Silva and the cuatrista Leo Rondón together with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia in January 2018 on a mini-tour through Vigo, Santiago and A Coruña. Those concerts were recorded and gave rise to Pacho’s fourth album for Deutsche Grammophon with the same title as the work. Since then, Cantos y Revueltas has been performed by various orchestras around the world, such as the Murcia Region Symphony, the Miami Bolívar Philharmonic, the Texas Christian University Latin American Festival, the Malaga Philharmonic, the Navarra Symphony, the Jalisco Philharmonic, the Orquesta of Extremadura, Bogotá Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Valencia Orchestra, Castilla y León Symphony, Gran Canaria Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony and Minería Orchestra in Mexico, most of them conducted by Manuel Hernández-Silva but also by Carlos Miguel Prieto, Rafael Payare or Domingo Hindoyan. Heterónimos premiered with the Murcia Region Symphony last April 2022 at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium with Pacho himself conducting.
Jesús González Brito, alias ‘Pingüino’, is a guitarist, cuatro player, double bass player, composer and pedagogue with whom Pacho has collaborated on many occasions including a phonographic record for Deutsche Grammophon, ENTROPÍA, perhaps Pacho’s most intimate and chamber music album to date. date, which brings together a good number of classic songs from Latin American popular music along with new works due to both Pacho and ‘Pingüino’ and which won the gold medal at the Global Music Awards.
Manuel Hernández-Silva conducts the soprano Nadège Meden and the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia with Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, Symphony of Lamentations, by Henryk Górecki, within the framework of the XI International Festival of Sacred Music of Bogotá, the next September 23 at 7:00 p.m. in the Fabio Lozano Auditorium. This concert marks the beginning of the symphonic season of maestro Hernández-Silva that will take him to new debuts with orchestras such as the Cyprus National Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Arctic Philharmonic, Orchestra National du Pays de la Loire, Galicia Symphony or Prague Philharmonia; and returns to the Valencia Orchestra, the Colombian National Symphony, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic or the Český Krumlov Festival, in the Czech Republic, in addition to having the opportunity to resume educational projects so dear to him as with the Musikene Orchestra and the Young Galician Symphony Orchestra.
Hernández-Silva has been principal conductor of the Córdoba Orchestra, main guest conductor of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra in Caracas, musical director of the Andalusian Youth Orchestra and principal and artistic director of the Malaga Philharmonic and the Navarra Symphony. He has conducted orchestras such as the Wienner Symphoniker, WDR Rundfunkorchester, Rheinische Philharmonie, Orchester National Bordeaux-Aquitaine, São Paulo State Orchestra, Wuppertal Symphony, Israel, Prague Radio, Janacek Philharmonic, Nord Czech Philharmonic, Olomouc Philharmonic, National of Mexico, Chile or Puerto Rico, Philharmonics of Seoul or Buenos Aires, among many others.
In Spain, Hernández-Silva has conducted practically all professional orchestras and at the most important festivals such as the Fortnight of Music, Granada and Úbeda Festivals, as well as at the Cemski-Krumlov Festival in the Czech Republic. As an opera director, he has received great criticism for his work on titles such as Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Cosí fan tutte or Don Giovanni, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Puccini’s La Boheme, Gianni Schicchi, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, or more recently Manon Lescaut. Hernández-Silva graduated from the Superior Conservatory of Vienna with honors in the chair of professors Reinhard Schwarz and Georg Mark. In the year of his diploma, he won the Forum Jünger Künstler conducting competition organized by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, conducting this formation at the Konzerthaus in the Austrian capital.
Spanish conductor José Luis Gómez has just renewed his contract with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra until the end of the 2026/27 season. Gómez was appointed musical director in Tucson in 2016 and at this time had a contract in force until 2024, so he still had two years of tenure left, which have been extended another three. José Luis Gómez began his musical career as a violinist, but came to international attention in 2010 after winning the First Prize of the Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt by unanimity of the jury. His performance in the competition earned him immediate appointment as Assistant Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position created especially for him by Paavo Järvi and the orchestra immediately after the competition’s conclusion. José Luis Gómez was also Principal Conductor of the 1813 Teatro Sociale di Como Orchestra between 2012 and 2015.
Since José Luis Gómez took over in Tucson, there has been a significant increase in the number of subscribers and sponsors. Gómez has worked hard to introduce new outreach activities while continuing to support and develop the orchestra’s existing educational projects. He is also a champion of many lesser-known South American composers, whose works he programs together with other classical authors. Similarly, he has been responsible for commissioning new compositions, such as Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño for trumpet, whose US premiere took place in 2019 with Pacho Flores.
On the American continent, José Luis Gómez maintains a close relationship with the Edmonton Symphony and has worked with orchestras such as the Houston Symphony, the Ottawa National Arts Center Orchestra, the Vancouver, Colorado, Grand Rapids, Winnipeg and Alabama Symphonies, Chamber Orchestra Antonio, Rochester, Louisiana, Pasadena, and Elgin Philharmonics, and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the International Youth Philharmonic. In the south he has worked with the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and the National Orchestra of Peru. He is intensely active in Europe, where he has conducted orchestras such as the RTVE Symphony, Weimar Staatskapelle Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony, Karlsruhe Staatstheater Orchester, Basel Sinfonietta, Orquestra Sinfônica do Porto, Castilla y Leon Symphony, Milan Pomeriggi Musicali, Warsaw Symphony, SWR Radio Sinfonie-Orchester Stuttgart, Tenerife Symphony Orchestra or the Malaga Philharmonic. In 2019 he made a successful debut at the Berlin Komische Oper with Gabriela Montero as soloist. He recently conducted a tour of Belgium with the Flanders Symphony and Johannes Moser as soloist. In the Asia-Pacific area he has led the Macau Orchestra with Nemanja Radulovic, New Zealand Symphony, Australian National Academy of Music, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and Daegu Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Other notable performances by José Luis Gómez include his debuts with the Moscow State Conservatory, the widely televised New Year’s Eve concert in Sofia and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra at their New Year’s concerts and some upcoming engagements include the National Symphony Orchestra. from Washington DC (Program with Yo Yo Ma and Paquito de Rivera), Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (With Stephen Hough, piano), or the Pacific, Colorado and Phoenix Symphonies. In the operatic arena, highlights include La Bohème at the Frankfurt Opera and a new production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Stuttgart Opera, La Forza del Destino in Tokyo with the New National Theatre, Don Carlo and Norma at The State Opera in Tbilisi, Georgia, La Traviata in concert version with the Sacramento Philharmonic, or Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni at the Teatro Sociale di Como, where he also conducted a spectacular production of Cavalleria Rusticana. He has recorded Bela Fleck’s Concerto No. 2 for banjo and orchestra, Juno Concerto, with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conducted the Hamburg Symphony and the talented young clarinettist Vladimir Soltan in the release of an album for MGD that collects the concertos for Nielson, Françaix and Debussy clarinet.
