Marina Heredia will be artist-in-residence of the Duisburger Philharmoniker in the 2022/23 symphony season. After a season that saw her debuts with the Orquesta da Casa da Música do Porto or the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and a summer that took her to the Granada International Music and Dance Festival and to Hamburg as a guest of the Martha Argerich Festival at the Laieszhalle of the Elbphilharmonie, Marina begun this season at the Lausitz Festival in Görlitz, the Seville Biennale or the inaugural concert of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra season, which was also the presentation of maestro Perry So as its new Musica and artistic Director, Marina will visit Duisburg up to four occasions to offer various concerts, both with the orchestra and with his flamenco company.
Marina’s residency begins with the quintessential work for cantaora with symphony orchestra, El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla. These concerts will take place at the Mercatorhalle in Duisburg, the orchestra’s usual venue, on November 9 and 10, under the direction of its principal conductor, Axel Kober. Next, on the 12th of that month in the same room, she will offer a flamenco recital with her company in quintet format, accompanied by guitar (José Quevedo ‘Bolita’), percussion (Paquito González) and choir / clapping (Fita Heredia and Anabel Rivera).
The second symphonic date will be at the end of the season and it will be the premiere of En Libertad! a work commissioned by the orchestra, composed jointly by José Quevedo ‘Bolita’ and Joan Albert Amargós, which will be conducted by Josep Pons on June 28 and 29. Quevedo, also the author of the texts, has based himself on the journey of the gypsy people from its original origins in the East to the Iberian Peninsula and, particularly, Andalusia. The residency closes with a new flamenco recital on July 1 whose program is based on the cantaora’s latest album, CAPRICHO, and which will feature the participation of musicians from the Duisburger Philharmoniker as guests along with the company’s musicians.
Perry So returns to the podium of the Navarra Symphony, of which he is the Music and Artistic Director since this season, to conduct a program that includes Bach’s Ricercare a 6, arranged by Anton Webern; Teoton, concerto for sheng and orchestra by Jukka Tiensuu (1948), performed by Wu Wei, the world’s most renowned performer of this Chinese wind instrument, and Beethoven’s Symphony No 3, Op. 55 Eroica.
Perry So was elected principal and artistic director of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra for a period of three years, from this season until the end of the 2024/25 season. Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early musical training in piano, organ, violin, viola, and composition. He received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a specialization in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, a period in which he founded an academic orchestra and directed the university’s opera company. He studied conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore under the tutelage of Maestro Gustav Meier and in 2008 received the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Edition of the St. Petersburg Prokofiev International Conducting Competition. Following this recognition, he was appointed Assistant Director and then Associate Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and artistic collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and is also a member of the Conducting Department of Orchestra of the Manhattan School of Music.
Present in concert halls on five continents, Perry So has recently made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, his operatic debut in Europe was at the Royal Danish Opera with The Magic Flute, and his American debut at the Yale Opera with Eugene Onegin. Some notable performances include a tour of Italy with the Nuremberg Symphony, a seven-week tour of South Africa leading three different orchestras in which he conducted Verdi’s Requiem in Cape Town as part of the South African National Arts Festival, or his return to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony. He has had a long-standing collaboration with the Royal Danish Theater and the Royal Danish Orchestra both in the concert hall and in the opera and ballet pit. He has been a frequent guest at Walt Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and in 2013 toured the Balkan Peninsula leading the Zagreb Philharmonic in the first series of cultural exchanges established after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the Navarra, Malaga, Tenerife, Nuremberg, Israel, New Zealand, Houston, Detroit, New Jersey and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, the London Philharmonics, Szezcin, Seoul and China, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz. His recording studio work covers a wide cross-section 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 he received the Diapason d’Or in January 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, most 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. . Perry, his wife Anna, and his daughter Caroline divide their time between Boston, Saint Paul, where Anna is a professor of history of science at the University of Minnesota, and Pamplona.
Christian Vásquez made his debut last year 2021 at the Tongyeong International Festival in South Korea conducting two concerts with the Festival Orchestra and two soloists such as Bomsori Kim and Camille Thomas and was immediately invited to conduct the final phase and the winners’ concert of the Tongyeong Isang Yun Cello International Competition on November 5th and 6th. The Isangyun International Competition has been presented by the Tongyeong International Music Foundation since 2003. It is held in memory of Isang Yun (1917-1995), a renowned Korean composer, promoting cultural exchanges between nations through music while that supports young musicians from all over the world. The contest takes place annually in the month of November, alternating the piano, violin and cello disciplines. Isang Yun was born in Tongyeong in 1917, he created bridges between Asian and Western cultures, his style is part of traditional Korean music, and yet, working with the twelve-tone technique and other means of the Western avant-garde, it also has its place in the European tradition.
Upon his return from Korea, Christian Vásquez will travel to Venezuela for a long stay leading the various formations of EL SISTEMA, in which he plays a prominent role as musical director of the Juan José Landaeta Orchestra, formerly the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra. On November 20, Christian Vásquez conducts the Juan José Landaeta with a program that includes: Tan Dun’s Wolf Totem, concerto for double bass and orchestra, with Edicson Ruiz as soloist, and the Concerto for orchestra by Béla Bartók; on November 26 he conducts the Simón Bolívar Symphony with the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns, with Thibault Vieux on the violin, the Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra by Efraín Oscher, again with Edicson Ruiz on double bass and the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss; on December 3, Christian Vásquez joins the Gaêlica group to present the show Una noche de luz; On December 7, he conducts the Venezuelan Symphony with the overture to The Marriage of Figaro and the Concerto in A Major for clarinet and orchestra by W. A. Mozart, with Andrés Nieves on clarinet and Symphony no. 9, New World, by Antonín Dvořák, to round off his stay again with the Bolívar, on December 16, with Hector Berlioz’s Te Deum.
Immediately afterwards, Christian Vásquez will travel to the Opera National de Paris where he will work as assistant to Gustavo Dudamel in the production of Tristan and Isolde, and where he will return later in April to direct several ballet performances, after passing through Poland, with the Baltic Philharmonic , where he will work with the violinist Robert Lakatoš, and again Venezuela. Before the end of the season he will still go to Colombia to lead the Colombian National Orchestra, with Pacho Flores, and the Medellín Philharmonic, and Switzerland to conduct the Geneva Conservatory Orchestra.
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.
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