Christian Vásquez returns to the Orchester Pasdeloup in Paris. After his debut last January 2023 with the orchestra at the Paris Philharmonie, in which he conducted works by Beethoven and Dvořàk, he was again invited to conduct two concerts in the current season, the first of which took place last November 11, again at the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez of the Philharmonie, with a program titled South American Tour that included works by Gershwin, Lecuona, Gardel, Bonfiglio and Márquez, with pianist Dina Bensaïd and Patricio Bonfiglio & El Sindicato Milonguero as soloists. The second of these concerts will take place at La Seine Musicale next Sunday, April 28, 2024, and with a totally different program that includes works by French authors such as Lalo, Overture to Le Roi d’Ys, and Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre, Grieg’s piano concerto with François Dumont as soloist and Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
This is being a period of intense activity that includes several premieres, such as the new trumpet concerto by the Colombian-Finnish composer Tuomas Turriago, with the Tampere Orchestra, with Pacho Flores as soloist, then he conducted the Galician Symphony with the Fuga Criolla, by Juan Bautista Plaza, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, and the absolute premiere of the new clarinet concerto by Pacho Flores, dedicated to Juan Ferrer, who served as soloist, and whom he wiññ also later conduct with the Orchestra of the Region of Murcia, next to La Alborada del Gracioso, by Ravel, and Pictures at an Exhibition, by Musorgski. The Clarinet Concerto by Pacho Flores is a shared commission between the aforementioned orchestras of Galicia and Murcia, and the Extremadura Orchestra.
A little later and with the Tenerife Symphony, Christian will conduct the European premiere of the Concierto del Mar for Venezuelan Cuatro and Orchestra, with the composer himself as soloist, along with works by Gabriela Ortiz, Evencio Castellanos and Alberto Ginastera.
Abraham Cupeiro presents PANGEA with the Oldenburgisches Staatsorchester under the baton of maestro Antonio Planelles Gallego next Sunday, April 28. This is a family activity that will take place in a double session at 11:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., in the Großes Haus of the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater. PANGEA is the second album by Abraham Cupeiro, recorded with the London Symphony under the direction of Dimas Ruiz. He has recently presented a new project, MYTHOS, at the Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo together with the Oviedo Filarmonía and directed by Fernando Briones. MYTHOS is his third and last album to date, also recorded with London Symphony and Dimas Ruiz.
About 200 million years ago on our planet there was a single gigantic continent: Pangea. This began to separate and over time gave rise to the different current continents as we know them. The journey we propose with this concert is the union through music of the different parts of the planet. Pangea is an educational and entertaining show that brings us closer to other cultures, with original music by Abraham Cupeiro and María Ruiz.
During the concert they will sound from southern Oceania with the echoes of its conch shells, to the mysterious Chinese mountains that the sound of the Hulusi draws with its melismatic melodies; great plains like those of North America, jungles like those of South America, the Peule flute of Senegal, the Bulgarian Bagpipe, the defiant Zurna and the ancient shepherd’s horns will sew the dress that will once again unite our land. With Pangea, Abraham Cupeiro proposes a trip that is a hymn to the cultural diversity of our planet.
Christian Vásquez returns to the Galicia Symphony Orchestra on April 18 and 19 to conduct a program that includes the absolute premiere of Aurea, a clarinet concerto composed by Pacho Flores and dedicated to Juan Ferrer, who will also perform as soloist. This concert is the result of a joint commission by the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, the Extremadura Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Region of Murcia, whose premieres will take place on April 25 and 26, and May 31 and June 1, respectively. The program in Galicia also includes the Fuga Criolla, by Juan Bautista Plaza, and the Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, Little Russia, by Tchaikovsky.
Christian Vásquez was born in Caracas in 1984, he began his music studies as a violinist and member of the renowned musical education program ‘El Sistema’. In 2006 he began his studies in orchestral conducting under the tutelage of maestro José Antonio Abreu, and that same year he was named musical director of the José Félix Ribas Youth Symphony Orchestra, in the state of Aragua. HHe was a Dudamel fellow during the season 2009/10. Following his debut with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in October 2009, one of his first appearances in Europe, Christian Vásquez was appointed Principal Guest Conductor, a position he held between 2010 and 2013. In 2010 he was also named Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela, and continues at the helm since 2017, when the
orchestra changed its name to Juan José Landaeta Symphony Orchestra. Christian Vásquez became Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2013/14 season, thus inaugurating an initial four-year mandate that would be extended for two more years until 2019. In the 2015/16 season he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest (Arnhem Symphony Orchestra), beginning his tenure with a tour of the Netherlands. He was recently also named associate director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony.
Juan Ferrer is one of the most versatile and active Spanish clarinetists of his generation and the first Spaniard to be part of the juries of prestigious competitions such as the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Ghent, Versailles, Competition for Asia and Oceania in Taipei (Taiwan), or Carlino (Italy), in which he has also offered recitals and master classes, a pedagogical work that he carries out with students from all over the world and in universities in Europe and Asia. This activity has recently been endorsed by his invitation to participate as a professor at the Simón Bolívar Foundation with three annual meetings starting with the 2017-18 season. An artist of the Buffet-Crampon Paris and Vandoren Paris brand, Ferrer is part of the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been principal clarinet since 1994, although his artistic activity has led him to offer concerts in China, Taiwan, Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Argentina and Spain, both as a soloist and in recitals as well as with chamber groups such as the Untía Trio, the Siglo XX Instrumental Group or the OSG Soloist Quintet, of the who is a member. He has performed as a guest with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra, the Liceu Orchestra of Barcelona, the Palau de les Arts of Valencia, the National Orchestra of Catalonia or the RTVE Orchestra, among many others, and has worked under the orders of some of the most prestigious batons: Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Daniel Harding, Sir Neville Marriner, Osmo Vänska, Guennadi Rozdestvenski, Peter Maag, James Conlon, Jesús López Cobos, Stanislaw Scrowaczewski, Dima Slobodeniouk, Gianandrea Noseda, Christoph Eschenbach, Juanjo Mena or Alberto Zedda. Juan Ferrer is a Professor at the Alfonso X El Sabio University and works regularly with the youth orchestras of Galicia, Euskadi, Catalonia or Canarias. He teaches in Spain, France, China, Taiwan, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Belgium, Russia, Argentina, in addition to participating in various editions of the Ibero-American Clarinet Academy in Castelo de Paiva ( Portugal). He has recorded an album with the pianist Daniel Del Pino with works dedicated to him by internationally renowned authors, such as Salvador Brotóns, Fernado Buide, Eduardo Soutullo, Karolis Biveinis, Octavio Vázquez, Wladimir Rosinskij and Juan Durán.
Abraham Cupeiro presents PANGEA with the Córdoba Orchestra under the baton of Lara Diloy next 16-21 April. This educational and family activity will take place at the Teatro Góngora in double sessions for students (10:00 and 12:00 h) from April 16 to 19, and as a family concert on April 21 (12:00 h). PANGEA is the second album by Abraham Cupeiro, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Dimas Ruiz. He has recently presented a new project, MYTHOS, at the Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo, together with the Oviedo Filarmonía and conductor Fernando Briones. MYTHOS is his third and latest album, also recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and Dimas Ruiz.
About 200 million years ago, our planet had a single gigantic continent, Pangea, which began to split and over time gave rise to the different continents as we know them today. This concert proposes a journey that unites the different parts of the planet through music. Pangea is an educational and entertaining show that brings us closer to other cultures, with original music by Abraham Cupeiro and María Ruiz.
During the concert we will listen to sounds from the austral Oceania, with the echoes of its conch shells, to the mysterious Chinese mountains, that the sound of the Hulusi draws with its melismatic melodies. The great plains of North America, the South American jungles, the Peule flute of Senegal, the Bulgarian bagpipe, the defiant Zurna and the ancient shepherd’s horns will sew the dress that will once again unite our land. With Pangea, Abraham Cupeiro invites us to a trip that is a hymn to the cultural diversity of our planet.
Christian Vásquez conducts the Tampere Philharmonic in a program that includes the absolute premiere of the new trumpet concerto by Tuomas Turriago, commissioned by the orchestra itself from the Colombian-Finnish composer and which will feature the Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores as soloist. The concert, which is completed with Fandangos by Roberto Sierra, Glosa Sinfónica Margariteña, by Inocente Carreño, and Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez, will take place next Friday, April 5 at 7:00 p.m. at the Tampere Hall.
Christian Vásquez was born in Caracas in 1984, he began his music studies as a violinist and member of the renowned musical education program ‘El Sistema’. In 2006 he began his studies in orchestral conducting under the tutelage of maestro José Antonio Abreu, and that same year he was named Music Director of the José Félix Ribas Youth Symphony, in the state of Aragua. He was a Dudamel scholarship recipient during the 2009/10 season. Following his debut with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in October 2009, one of his first appearances in Europe, Christian Vásquez was appointed its Principal Guest Conductor, a position he held between 2010 and 2013. In 2010 he was also named Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela, and has continued to lead it since 2017, when it changed its name to Orquesta Juan Jose Landaeta. Christian Vásquez became Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2013/14 season, thus inaugurating an initial four-year mandate that would be extended for two more years until 2019. In the 2015/16 season he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest (Arnhem Symphony Orchestra), beginning his tenure with a tour of the Netherlands. He was recently also named associate director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony.
Tuomas Turriago (1979) is a Finnish composer, pianist and conductor of Colombian origin. Since 2004 he has served as an accompanying senior lecturer at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Turriago is a founding member and director of the Tampere Chamber Opera Association. He has conducted the City Orchestras of Vaasa, Seinäjoki and Mikkeli, and TampereRaw, the Tampere Chamber Orchestra and the Brass Band of the Tampere Philharmonic.
Over the next two weeks, Abraham Cupeiro presents his latest album, Myhtos, with the Oviedo Filarmonía, first with a series of six educational concerts at the Teatro Filarmónica between March 13 and 15, and concluding with a concert at the Teatro Campoamor the following week, on March 21 at 8:00 p.m. Builder and multi-instrumentalist, Abraham Cupeiro recovers instruments that have been lost in time, which he uses to create new sounds and interweave them in other musics. As a performer, he stands out as one of the few people who plays the Karnyx (Celtic Iron Age trumpet). He is also the promoter of an ancestral instrument in the Galician tradition: the «corna», an instrument that his grandfather played and that appears in the illuminations of Alfonso X, king of Castille.
Mythos
Amazonian mythology, ancient Chinese dragons, Nordic giants, gods and goddesses of Antiquity, sacred animals and Mother Nature. Arab, Celtic, Roman or Greek mythologies are the starting points from which Abraham Cupeiro takes the audience of MYTHOS to worlds and cities lost in time, such as the enigmatic Atlantis. Recovering the instruments that our ancestors played in Greek theaters, Roman circuses or caves lost at the ends of the world, he offers us a musical journey through stories created since time immemorial to find a logic to the origin of the universe. Abraham Cupeiro and his ancestral instruments will open the doors of the past for us and guide us on a journey through past civilizations to the moment when human beings first looked up to infinity. In MYTHOS we will discover, among other wonders, the sounds of the Aulos, one of the most represented instruments in Greek antiquity whose invention is attributed to the Goddess Athena, or those of the Cornu, rescued from the ashes of Pompeii. MYTHOS was recently presented on a Galician tour with the Gaos Orchestra, with performances in Ferrol, Lugo and Santiago. Future engagements will take Abraham to Córdoba, where he will perform PANGEA in another series of educational concerts with the Córdoba Orchestra in April.
Abraham’s interest in organology has led him to obtain a collection of more than 200 instruments from all over the world and from different periods, that he shows through a concert-monologue under the name Resonando en el Pasado (Resounding in the past). Abraham recovers and builds various instruments, and performs with them today’s music, as well as mixes them with modern ensembles.
