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.
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.
Christian Vásquez will conduct the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in two concerts that will take place on November 16 and 19 at the Jing Jing hall in Shanghai and the Grand National Theater in Beijing. The program consists of Guasamacabra, by the recently and prematurely disappeared Paul Desenne, Three Symphonic Versions, by Julián Orbón, and the Symphony No. 10 in E minor Op.93, by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Christian has just conducted the Orchestre Pasdeloup in Paris, the oldest active orchestra in France, and will now have an important presence in Spain leading orchestras such as the Galician Symphony Orchestra, the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the Region of Murcia, where, among other works, he will conduct the premieres of the Clarinet Concerto by Pacho Flores with Juan Ferrer, the dedicatee of the work, as soloist, or the concert for Venezuelan cuatro by Leo Rondón, with the composer himself as soloist.
Christian Vásquez was Music Director of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra between 2013 and 2019, Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2020, and of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra between 2010 and 2013. He is also Music Director of the Juan José Landaeta Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela, previously known as the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra, and has conducted other orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Galician Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic, Philharmonic of Luxembourg, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Mexican National Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gran Canaria Philharmonic, Estonian National Orchestra, Royal Danish Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra or the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, among many others.
Hernández-Silva, Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón meet again to continue presenting the work Cantos y Revueltas throughout the globe, this time together with Albares, the flugelhorn concerto also composed by the Spanish-Venezuelan trumpeter. On this occasion the stage is the Örebro Konserthus, where they will be accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. The program also includes the new orchestration of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition by the Swedish composer Christian Lindberg.
Premiered and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in January 2018 with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia at the Auditorio de Galicia, Cantos y Revueltas has already been performed in places as different as Miami, Fort Worth (Texas), Malaga, Navarre, Jalisco, Badajoz , Bogotá, Liverpool, Valencia, Valladolid, Segovia, Cuenca, Las Palmas, Montreal, Mexico City, Nicosia, Dartmouth, Tromsø and Bodø in Norway, or Raleigh (North Carolina), and after this concert in Sweden it will still come to Córdoba, Granada, Barcelona, Miami, Vail (Colorado) or Buenos Aires, most of them with the presence of Leo Rondón and the conducting of Manuel Hernández-Silva. Originally written for trumpets, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, Pacho had already arranged a version for full orchestra that was premiered in Norway. In Sweden they will perform the premiere of the classical orchestra version, which will also be heard in Granada next January.
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Although a more recent composition —it was premiered in April 2022 with the Tenerife Symphony under the baton of Christian Vásquez—, Albares, concert for flugelhorn and orchestra, has already been performed in Caracas, Santiago de Chile, A Coruña, Liverpool and Bogotá. After its Swedish premiere, it will be heard in Singapore, Mexico City and Barcelona, and also be the object of a recording soon.
Pacho Flores makes his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel on July 18 at the Hollywood Bowl, where he will perform Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño. The Márquez’s Concerto is part of a program that includes the premiere of La Serpiente de Colores, by Cortés-Álvarez, commissioned by the orchestra, and Estancia, de Ginastera in its complete ballet version. Pacho, who has just closed his residency with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, with which he offered the British premiere of Altar de Bronce by Gabriela Ortiz, thus puts the finishing touch to a season that has taken him to Mexico, Singapore, Cyprus, Germany, Venezuela, Great Britain, Serbia, Norway, Spain, Colombia, and twice to Canada —Quebec and Montreal—, as well as several times to the US, including his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, his returns to Tucson and San Diego, where he is a frequent guest, and new visits to Dartmouth College or the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra.
This season, he has also closed the premiere cycle of Historias de Flores y Tangos by Daniel Freiberg and began the one for Altar de Bronce by Gabriela Ortiz with the Galicia Symphony conducted by Hernández-Silva. Pacho has also released his latest recording, ESTIRPE, with Deutsche Grammophon. Dudamel closes a list of conductors with whom Pacho has worked this season and which includes Manuel Hernández-Silva, José Luis Gómez, Christian Vásquez, Domingo Hindoyan, Rafael Payare, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Felix Mildenberger, Anu Tali and Alondra de la Parra.
Next season, which will again begin in Mexico, will see Pacho’s debut with new US orchestras such as the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony or the New World Symphony, as well as his return to San Diego to close the cycle of premieres of Gabriela Ortiz and to Ohio for the premiere of Christian Lindberg’s Magical Horses. He will also appear at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico and the Bravo Veil! Festival in Colorado, and will perform in Sweden, Germany, Poland, Finland and again Singapore and Norway, as well as in many Spanish orchestras such as the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada and the Orquesta Simfónica del Vallès, with which he will make his debut, the Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Region of Murcia or the Orquesta de Córdoba.The 23/24 season will also see the premiere of Pacho’s clarinet concerto, written for Juan Ferrer and commissioned by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, the Orquesta de Extremadura and the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Region of Murcia.
