Christian Vásquez will conduct the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra at the LVI Bratislava Music Festival in a program consisting of El Salón México, by Aaron Copland; Symphonie Espagnole, by Edouard Lalo, with the violinist Ivan Zenaty; and La noche de los Mayas, by Silvestre Revueltas. Vásquez, who has just returned from a long stay in Colombia with the Medellin Philharmonic, which he conducted in four different programs throughout the month of September, will travel to Israel and Poland to lead the Haifa Symphony Orchestra and the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic after the concerts at the Bratislava Festival with the Slovak Philharmonic, before joining the production of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Opéra National de Paris in which he will be assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel, the new musical director of the institution.
Christian Vásquez will also visit Spain a couple of times this season to conduct the Navarre and Tenerife symphony orchestras. In Pamplona, he will conduct a program that includes the Concierto-Capricho for harp and orchestra by Xavier Montsalvatge, with the Sevillian harpist Cristina Montes Mateo, and the Symphony No. 3 in F major, op. 90 by Johannes Brahms. In Tenerife he will lead his compatriot and friend, the great trumpeter Pacho Flores, in a program consisting of Danzas Latinas, by Efraín Oscher, Concierto para fliscorno, by Pacho Flores himself, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 e E minor, op. 64. Before the end of the season, he will also pay a visit to the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, where he was principal conductor for six seasons between 2013 and 2019.
Christian Vásquez is currently Musical Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. In addition to his tenure in Stavanger, he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest between 2015 and 2020, and of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra between 2010 and 2013. He has conducted orchestras such as the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Beethoven Festival Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Estonian National Orchestra, Danish Royal Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, RTE National Orchestra from Ireland, Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Salzburg Camerata, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa) or Los Angeles Philharmonic. In Spain he has worked with the Galician Symphony Orchestra, Gran Canaria Philharmonic, Sinfónica de Castilla y León or Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias.
Pacho Flores travels to Sweden for the premiere of the trumpet concerto Caballos Mágicos, by Christian Lindberg, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, as well as for the recording of an album with works by Lindberg for European Grammophon. Along with this new piece, the recording includes Un Sueño Morisco, double concerto for trumpet and trombone that was commissioned and premiered by the ORTVE with Pacho Flores, Ximo Vicedo on the trombone and Lindberg as conductor. Lindberg will on this occasion perform again not only as conductor but also as trombonist.
This concert, which got its premiere in Spain with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, is part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts to prominent composers launched by Pacho Flores and managed by his international agency ACM Concerts. The composers who have taken part in the first two rounds of commissions are Arturo Márquez, Paquito D’Rivera, Roberto Sierra, Efraín Oscher, Daniel Freiberg and Lindberg himself, and there is a third round in preparation now. The orchestras that have been involved in the different joint commissions and premieres are the National Symphony of Mexico, Tucson Symphony, Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan, Oviedo Filarmonía, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquesta de Minería, Valencia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine or the Arctic Philharmonic; and the conductors who have or are going to participate in these premieres are Carlos Miguel Prieto, José Luis Gómez, Michiyoshi Inoue, Lucas Macías, Domingo Hindoyan, Manuel Hernández-Silva, Rafael Payare, Paul Daniel and Christian Lindberg. Several of these concerts have already been recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon label.
The contribution of this project to the expansion of the trumpet repertoire has had no equal in the history of the instrument. This, together with the technological evolution of new four-piston prototypes in new keys that Pacho Flores is carrying out with the help of the Spanish manufacturer STOMVI, his intense educational activity, the recording legacy he is producing —in which he alternates the great classical works for the trumpet with this new exclusive repertoire— and, naturally, his unbeatable musical and technical conditions, makes Pacho Flores the most influential classical trumpeter in history. To these premieres must also be added the concerts that many other composers dedicate to Pacho on their own initiative, as well as those he has himself composed, such as Cantos y Revueltas, or what is possibly the first flugelhorn concerto ever written.
Trumpeter Pacho Flores will perform at the world premiere of a new trumpet concert next Monday, September 20 at 19:30 at the Barbican Center in London, United Kingdom. This premiere is the result of a commission, inspired by Pacho Flores himself, from Peter Ash, artistic director of the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, to Eleanor Alberga, an Afro-Caribbean composer (Kingston, Jamaica, 1949) of British nationality and residence.
Eleanor Alberga is a highly regarded British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and the Royal Opera at Covent Garden. After studying piano and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she began a career as a pianist which was then redirected to composition when she arrived at the London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1978. After leaving the LCDT, she was able to focus entirely on composing, and since then the interest in her music has only increased. In 2015 her work ARISE, ATHENA!, commissioned by the PROMS for the opening of the Last Night, consolidated her international reputation as a composer of enormous talent and originality. Alberga has won several awards, including a NESTA Scholarship in 2000 and a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019. In 2020 she was elected member of the Royal Academy of Music and in 2021 she received the Order of the British Empire for her services to music.
This new world premiere is, once again, the first of many to come for Pacho Flores along this 2021/22 season. He will afterwards perform the Swedish premiere of Caballos Mágicos, a trumpet concert by trombonist, conductor and composer Christian Lindberg, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the composer himself at the podium. This piece had its world premiere last May in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) together with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and its principal conductor Paul Daniel. During his stay in Sweden, Pacho will participate in the recording of an album with works by Lindberg, including this same concert as well as Un Sueño Morisco, a double concerto for trumpet and trombone commissioned and premiered by the ORTVE, with Ximo Vicedo on the trombone and the composer as conductor. In October, Pacho will premiere Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, with the Oviedo Filarmonía and Lucas Macías. In November, he will return to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Domingo Hindoyan for the British premieres of Concierto venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, and Pacho’s own work Cantos y Revueltas, in which he will be accompanied by the cuatrista Leo Rondón. Later on, in February 2022, he will perform the Spanish and US premiere of Paquito D’Rivera’s concert, with the San Diego Symphony under Rafael Payare and the Valencia Orchestra under Hernández-Silva, respectively; and between March and April the Brazilean premiere of Roberto Sierra’s concert Salseando, with the Sinfónica do Estado de São Paulo and Carlos Miguel Prieto, which will then see its French premiere in June with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine and Manuel Hernández-Silva. After this, Pacho will return to Spain to premiere Concierto Mambí, by Igmar Alderete, with the Córdoba Orchestra and its principal conductor, Domínguez-Nieto.
Christian Vásquez conducts the Medellin Philharmonic Orchestra next Saturday, September 4, at the Metropolitan Theater of this Colombian city. The program includes Mussorgsky’s Intermezzo in modo classico, Mozart’s Clarinet concerto with Felipe Jiménez, and Bizet’s Symphony in C. The concert is part of a four-week residence within the selection process for a principal conductor that the orchestra is currently carrying out. Throughout this month-long residence, Christian Vásquez will conduct four concerts of different character and varied programs.
The next concert will take place on Friday 10 September at the Parroquia de San Juan Apóstol in Medellin with ensembles from the various sections of the Medellin Philharmonic—strings, wood, brass and percussion—. Vásquez will conduct works by Donizetti, Gounod, Wagner, Copland, Jorge Humberto Pinzón or Pacho Flores.
The following week, on Friday, September 17, Christian will conduct a popular program at the Theater of the University of Medellin as part of the social and community activities of the Philharmonic, which will include some of the most popular soundtracks of the last years by composers such as John Williams, Henry Mancini, Hans Zimmer, Lalo Schifrin, Howard Shore, Monty Norman or Ramin Djawadi. Christian’s residence will finish on Sunday, September 26 with an educational concert that aims to take the audience on a journey from Spain to various Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina and finally Colombia, through works by Ruperto Chapí, Gerónimo Giménez, Rafael Hernández, Pérez Prado, Miguel Matamoros, Alberto Nepomuceno, Antonio Estévez, Lucho Bermúdez or Miguel Ángel Martín.
Christian Vásquez is Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, which he led on an important tour around Europe that took them to perform in London, Lisbon, Toulouse, Munich, Stockholm and Istanbul. Vásquez has also been Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest in The Netherlands and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.
Taller Atlántico Contemporáneo will perform within the Crumb-Lorca Project at the Granada International Music and Dance Festival on its 70th anniversary edition. This series of three monographic concerts is the core of the Crumb-Lorca Project, in which groups such as the Bretón Quartet, NeoArs Sonora or United Instruments of Lucilin dedicate part of their programs to the works of this North American composer. It is a historic event because the 12 works that George Crumb composed over more than half a century under the inspiration of Federico García Lorca will be performed together for the first time by Taller Atlántico Contemporáneo in these concerts.
This is a production of ACM Concerts for the Granada Festival, supported by the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical. Taller Atlántico Contemporáneo (TAC) consists of singers Carmen Gurriarán and Verónica Plata, sopranos, Susana Ferrero, mezzo, and Isidro Anaya, baritone; André Cebrián, flute; Eduardo Martínez, oboe; Kathleen Balfe, cello; Joaquín Arrabal, double bass; Alba Barreiro, harp; Pedro Mateo González, guitars and banjo; Fernando Bustamante, mandolin; Carolina Alcaraz, Alejandro Sanz and Juan Antonio Martín, percussion; Nicasio Gradaille, piano; and Diego García Rodríguez, conductor.
George Crumb (Charleston, West Virginia, October 24, 1929), is one of the most important living composers on the current international scene and a key figure in the evolution of North American music in the second half of the 20th century. His enormous devotion to another of the most necessary artists of the 20th century, Federico García Lorca, led him to put music to a large number of texts by the poet from Granada over a period of half a century. His first approaches to Lorca’s work date back to the early 1960s, a decade in which he composed up to five works on texts from Libro de Poemas (1921), Poema del Cante Jondo (1921), Bodas de Sangre (1931) or Yerma (1934), but especially of Canciones (1927) and El Diván del Tamarit (1931). After a period of more than 15 years, he returned to Lorca in the mid-80s to put music to Canciones Infantiles, included in the poetry collection Canciones. And it is not until more than two decades later, and already at a very advanced age which hasn’t seen his passion for Federico diminished, that he faces his last three cycles so far, composed consecutively between 2008 and 2012.
Taller Atlántico Contemporáneo has a long history of dedication to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, with special attention to Spanish and very particularly Galician composers, of whom it has premiered countless works, many of them dedicated to the ensemble. This Crumb-Lorca Project is an idea on which the TAC has been working for some years and that acquires a special significance for being carried out at the Federico Garcia Lorca Center in Granada. The TAC made his presentation at the Granada Festival in 2014 with a very interesting proposal that included Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, along with the absolute premiere of Cinco Guerreros by Sebastian Mariné, commissioned by the festival. On that occasion, the link between the two works was painting, through the work of Mark Rothko and José Guerrero, who was from Granada and was influenced by Rothko after meeting him in New York.
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