Pacho Flores begins in December his artistic residency with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which will be completed with two further visits to the British orchestra in May and July 2023 and close with the recording of a new album with its principal conductor, Domingo Hindoyan. In this first visit, Pacho will participate in the Spirit of Christmas concerts under the direction of Ian Tracey; in May, he will offer two French trumpet concerts by Tomasi and Jolivet; and in July he will perform again Salseando by Roberto Sierra, a concert co-commissioned and premiered by the orchestra back in 2020, and offer the UK premiere of Altar de Bronce, a new trumpet concerto by Gabriela Ortiz, commissioned together with the Galician Symphony (Hernández-Silva), New World Symphony (Carlos Miguel Prieto) and San Diego Symphony (Rafael Payare).
Pacho’s relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is very close, as it is the fourth season that Pacho will perform at the Royal Philharmonic Hall after his visits in the 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2021/22 seasons. The orchestra was part of the joint commission of three new trumpet concertos: Salseando, by Roberto Sierra, Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz, and Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera; along which Pacho has also performed Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño, a result of the same project of shared commissions, and Cantos y Revueltas, by Pacho himself.
This season Pacho is also resident artist with the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, with which he will offer two symphonic programs, both conducted by Manuel Hernández-Silva, and a chamber music concert with Jesús ‘Pingüino’ Gonzalez, included in the season of the Philharmonic Society of A Coruña. The symphonic programs include the Galician Youth Symphony Orchestra, with which he will perform Concierto de Otoño by Márquez and Albares, a flugelhorn concert by Flores himself; and the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, with D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezolano and the World premiere of Ortiz’s Altar de Bronce.
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.
Pacho Flores stars in a new premiere of Historias de Flores y Tangos by Daniel Freiberg with the Minería Symphony and Carlos Miguel Prieto on August 19, 20 and 21. This concert is the product of a shared commission between the Oviedo Filarmonía orchestra, which premiered it on October 23, 2021 at the Príncipe Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo under the direction of Lucas Macías; the Minería Symphony Orchestra; the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, which will premiere it on March 16 and 17, 2023 under the baton of Manuel Hernández-Silva; and the Walla Walla Symphony will close the cycle of premieres under the direction of its Chief Conductor Yaacob Bergman on May 2, 2023. Along with Historias de Flores y Tangos, Pacho will also play his own work Cantos y Revueltas, which has the participation of co-soloist of Leo Rondón playing the Venezuelan Cuatro.
This concert is part of the project of shared commissions that Pacho Flores, together with his agency ACM Concerts, launched in 2017 with the aim of expanding the solo trumpet repertoire with orchestra with concerts that offer a greater range, both in register, as well as sound and color, and therefore, expressive capacity, making room for the various prototypes of four-piston trumpets, cornets and flugelhorns in new tonalities that Pacho has spent years experimenting and developing with his manufacturer Stomvi.
Five other concerts have already emerged from this project: Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño, commissioned and premiered by the National Orchestra of Mexico (Prieto), the Orchestra of the Center for Performing Arts of Hyogo Japan (Inoue), Oviedo Filarmonía (Macías) and Tucson Symphony (Gomez); the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Hindoyan), Minería (Prieto), Valencia Orchestra (Hernández-Silva) and San Diego Symphony (Payare); Salseando, by Roberto Sierra: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Hindoyan), Murcia Orchestra (Hernández-Silva), São Paulo State Symphony (Prieto) and Bordeaux National Orchestra (Hernández-Silva); Danzas Latinas, by Efraín Oscher, Royal Philharmonic of Galicia (Hernández-Silva); and Caballos Mágicos, by Christian Lindberg Royal Galician Philharmonic (Daniel), Swedish Chamber Orchestra (Lindberg) and Bilkent Symphony (Lindberg); and a new commission is already underway, Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz by the Galicia Symphony Orchestra (Hernández-Silva), the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Hindoyan) and the New World Symphony (Prieto).
Several of these concerts have already been recorded, such as Caballos Mágicos, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Christian Lindberg, a recording that includes another concert with the participation of Pacho Flores, such as Sueño Morisco, a double concerto for trumpet and trombone commissioned and premiered by the RTVE Orchestra; the Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez and the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’ Rivera, which are part of ESTIRPE, the new album by Pacho Flores with Minería y Prieto that will be available from July 29; and Salseando, by Roberto Sierra and Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz, which will be recorded within a year with Liverpool and Hindoyan.
Pacho Flores will be artist-in-residence of La Virée Classique (The Classical Spree) 2022, the summer festival organized by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra during the month of August. The broad presence provided by his status as artist-in-residence, with three different programs as a soloist, will allow him to also show himself as a conductor and composer, two facets that have become increasingly important in the development of his career. On August 10, on the Esplanade of the Olympic Park with the Montreal Symphony conducted by Rafael Payare, Pacho Flores will perform the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, a concerto commissioned and premiered by the Minería Symphony Orchestra (Prieto), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Hindoyan), Valencia Orchestra (Hernández-Silva) and San Diego Symphony (Payare).
On August 13, at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Pacho will play and conduct a brass and percussion ensemble with a program featuring works by Copland and Joan Tower, originals for that group, as well as Musas y Resuello, by Pacho himself, along with others by Gershwin, Sarasate, PIazzolla and another of Pacho’s works, Labios Vermelhos, arranged for this format also by Pacho Flores himself. In this concert he will have the participation as a guest soloist of Paul Merkelo, OFM’s principal trumpeter. And finally on August 14, again at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe and under the baton of Rafael Payare conducting the Ensemble de la Virée (Ensemble made up of 15 string instrumentalists: winners of the OSM Competition, CMIM, members of the OSM and the Obiora ensemble and guest soloists), Pacho will play Piazzolla’s Revirado and his own work Cantos y Revueltas, for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings. Therefore, three concerts as a soloist, one of them also as conductor and three works of his authorship plus the arrangements of another three is the balance of his presence as resident artist in the 2022 edition of this Virée Classique.
He will then travel to Mexico for the American premiere, together with the Minería Symphony and Carlos Miguel Prieto, of Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, co-commissioned by Minería itself, the Oviedo Filarmonía (Macías), Arctic Philharmonic (Hernández-Silva) and Walla Walla Symphony (Bergman), and for the presentation of his most recent recording on Deutsche Grammophon, ESTIRPE, recorded precisely with Minería and Prieto in August 2019 and which includes the Concierto de Otoño, by Arturo Márquez, Latin American Chronicles by Daniel Freiberg, Concerto Venezolano by D’Rivera, Mestizo by Efraín Oscher and a short piece by Pacho himself, the Venezuelan waltz, Morocota. This is Pacho’s fifth recording for Deutsche Grammophon after Cantar, Entropía, Fractales, and Cantos y Revueltas.
