Marina Heredia returns to the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, conducted by José Trigueros, to perform once again the program they offered last December in Santiago, A Coruña and Ourense, which will now be presented at the Círculo de las Artes in Lugo next Wednesday 23 February, and at the Teatro Afundación in Pontevedra on Thursday, 24 February. The program includes a selection of Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca and orchestrated by the conductor himself, and the brief intervention of El corregidor y la molinera, by Manuel de Falla.
Marina Heredia is one of the most internationally requested cantaoras to perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla. She has worked, among others, with the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, both under Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, with whom she has also recorded it for Harmonia Mundo with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In France he has sung it with the Rouen Opera and the Orchestre National de Lille, both times under Josep Vicent, and she has more recently performed it in Spain at the Úbeda International Music and Dance Festival with the RTVE Orchestra led by Manuel Hernández-Silva, with whom she had already participated in a superb production by La Fura dels Baus at the Granada Festival.
In two weeks she will sing it again with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado in two iconic German halls such as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, and shortly afterwards with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música conducted by Stefan Blunier. In the 2022/23 season, Marina will be a resident artist in the subscription series of a German orchestra to be announced in due course. During this artistic residency, Marina will perform El Amor Brujo as well as the world premiere of a work commissioned by the orchestra and composed specifically for her by a Spanish composer. She will also offer a flamenco concert with her company and an informal chamber music concert with musicians from the orchestra, which will include fragments of her last album, CAPRICHO.
Perry So returns to the San Francisco Symphony on February 11 and 12 to conduct an original program in which all the works will be performed by the orchestra for the first time. This program of San Francisco Symphony premieres opens with with Bounce!!, by Texuu Kim. Pipa virtuoso Wu Man will then join the orchestra for the Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra by Lou Harrison, which will be followed by Nim,by Younghi Pagh-Paan, and The Age of Birds, by Takashi Yoshimatsu. The program closes with Zhou Long’s lively The Rhyme of Taigu, celebrating the energy and spirit of Japanese Taiko drumming. This concert is a recovery of the one scheduled for February 12 and 13, 2021, which was canceled due to the pandemic that has overcome us for the past two years.
Perry So’s debut with the San Francisco Symphony also took place in the month of February 2020 (February is definitely Perry’s month in San Francisco). On that occasion, the event celebrated the Year of the Mouse with a Chinese New Year Concert in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Symphony’s signature heritage event, which bridges East and West traditions with the universal language of music. The annual event is an elegant and colorful celebration of the Lunar New Year, drawing upon vibrant Asian traditions, past and present. Conductor Perry So made his San Francisco Symphony debut leading the orchestra in a program with traditional folk music and works by Asian composers, including the U.S. premiere of Huang Ruo’s Folk Songs for Orchestra and Bright Sheng’s Red Silk Dance.
Perry So will soon return to Spain to conduct the Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias with pianist Nikolai Luganski, in a program that includes Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in E minor “Ballade”, Op. 60, and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61.
Christian Vásquez is at the Opéra National de Paris assisting Gustavo Dudamel in the eleven performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro that have been taking place at the Palais Garnier since last January 21. Immediately afterwards, Christian Vásquez will return to Spain to conduct the Navarre Symphony Orchestra in a program consisting of the Concierto-capriccio for harp and orchestra by Xavier Montsalvatge, featuring the Sevillian harpist Cristina Montes Mateo, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 3. Later this season he will return again to our country to conduct the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and his good friend Pacho Flores, whom he will lead in the world premiere of the Concierto para fliscorno, by the trumpeter himself, and Danzas Latinas, by Efraín Oscher, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64.
Christian Vásquez was Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and the and the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest and the Gävle Symfoniorkester. He has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, State Symphony of Russia, Tokyo Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Sinfónica de Galicia, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Warsaw Beethoven Festival, Turku Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orquesta Nacional de México, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Münchner Philharmoniker, Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Danish Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra or RTE National Symphony. Christian’s first opera engagement in Europe was at the Norwegian Opera with Carmen. In North America, he has conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa) and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the latter during his participation in their Young Artist Fellowship Program.
Christian Vásquez began to study violin at the age of eight years in San Sebastián de los Reyes (Aragua State). In 2006 he started his studies in orchestra conducting under the direction of Jose Antonio Abreu and was appointed Musical Director of the Sinfónica Juvenil José Félix Ribas, at the Aragua State.
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.
Marina Heredia makes her debut with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia conducted by José Trigueros, in a program that includes a selection of Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca and orchestrated by the conductor himself, and the brief intervention of El corregidor y la molinera, by Manuel de Falla. The concerts will take place in Santiago, A Coruña and Ourense on December 17, 18 and 22, respectively. This same program will be performed again with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia in February 2022, with concerts in other Galician towns such as Lugo or Valga.
Marina Heredia is one of the most internationally requested cantaoras to perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla. She has worked, among others, with the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, both under Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, with whom she has also recorded it for Harmonia Mundo with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In France he has sung it with the Rouen Opera and the Orchestre National de Lille, both times under Josep Vicent, and she has more recently performed it in Spain at the Úbeda International Music and Dance Festival with the RTVE Orchestra led by Manuel Hernández-Silva, with whom she had already participated in a superb production by La Fura dels Baus at the Granada Festival.
Soon she will sing it again with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado in two iconic German halls such as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, and shortly afterwards with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música conducted by Stefan Blunier. In the 2022/23 season, Marina will be a resident artist in the subscription series of a German orchestra to be announced in due course. During this artistic residency, Marina will perform El Amor Brujo as well as the world premiere of a work commissioned by the orchestra and composed specifically for her by a Spanish composer. She will also offer a flamenco concert with her company and an informal chamber music concert with musicians from the orchestra, which will include fragments of her last album, CAPRICHO.
Maestro Christian Vásquez will be conducting in Italy and Poland for the next two weeks: in Italy, he will lead the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra on November 26 and 27 at the Politeama Garibaldi Theater, in a program that includes concerts for saxophone and orchestra by Glazunov and Pierre-Philippe Bauzin, with saxophonist Alex Sebastianutto, and Symphony No. 8 by Dvořák. In Poland, he will conduct the National Music Forum Wrocław Philharmonic Orchestra (NFM Filharmonia Wrocławska) on December 3. The program includes Vaughan Williams’s Suite for Viola and Orchestra, with Artur Tokarek as soloist, and Bizet’s Symphony in C. Immediately afterwards, Christian will travel to Paris to assist Gustavo Dudamel in the production of Le nozze di Figaro at the National Opera of Paris, whose performances will take place throughout the months of January and February, just before returning to Spain to lead the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, in a program that includes the Concerto-Capriccio for harp and orchestra by Xavier Montsalvatge with the harpist Cristina Montes, and Brahms’ 3rd Symphony.
Christian Vásquez was Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, leading them on an important tour around Europe which took them to perform in London, Lisbon, Toulouse, Munich, Stockholm and Istanbul. Vásquez has also been Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra between 2013 and 2019, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest from 2015 till 2020, a tenure he started with a tour around The Netherlands featuring an all-Latin programme.
Following his debut with the Gävle Symfoniorkester in October 2009, one of his first appearances in Europe, Christian was appointed Principal Guest Conductor between 2010 and 2013. He has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, State Symphony of Russia, Tokyo Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony. In North America, he has conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa) and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the latter during his participation in their Young Artist Fellowship Program.
Since then he has conducted orchestras in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Estonia, Ireland, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, etc. Christian’s first opera engagement in Europe was at the Norwegian Opera with Carmen. Christian Vásquez started playing the violin at the age of 8, in the city of San Sebastián de los Reyes (Aragua State). In 2006 he began his studies of orchestral conducting under maestro José Antonio Abreu, and that same year he was appointed musical director of the José Félix Ribas Youth Symphony Orchestra, in the Aragua State.
