From 3 to 20 July, La Laguna will host the third edition of the Aguere International Music Festival, a project that seeks to offer a musical programme of the highest level and make the city a meeting point for both professionals and music students in spaces of great heritage value.
During the presentation of the event, the Councillor for Culture and President of the Autonomous Organisation for Musical Activities (OAAM), Adrián del Castillo, assured that the festival ‘strengthens the artistic future of the municipality, giving wings to the creativity of young musicians, but without forgetting the general public’. He also stressed that events such as this one ‘open up spaces such as the San Miguel hermitage, the Santo Domingo convent, the San Bartolomé de Tejina church and the Museum of History and Anthropology to top-level artists’.
For his part, the director of the festival, Daniel Molina, explained that the project arose from the need to “give La Laguna, as a World Heritage city, its own chamber music festival. We have been ambitious, we have created an educational space of reference that offers a real opportunity for learning and growth to young musicians from the Canary Islands”, he explained.
The festival reinforces its presence in the historic centre of La Laguna with a programme that includes concerts by the duo Fortecello, Butterfly Lovers and the saxophonist Daniel Valerón, winner of the 1st International Soloists Competition of the Aguere International Music Festival. The public will also be able to enjoy another year of the Aguere Chamber Orchestra, which will be conducted by the students of the orchestral conducting course, under the baton of maestro Borja Quintas.
‘Faced with the insularity of the islands, the Festival is proposed as a meeting point in the month of July that complements and expands the existing educational offer in the islands, providing access to a level of excellence that is usually concentrated in large capitals and centres of European prestige’, explained the director of the event.
One of the most significant examples of this pedagogical approach in the festival’s programme is the Orchestral Conducting course to be held between 15 and 20 July, which since the first edition has been a pioneering project in the Canary Islands, which includes its own chamber orchestra – the Aguere Chamber Orchestra – as a practical learning tool for student conductors in training. This orchestra is made up of young people who are finishing or have finished their higher studies at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Canarias, as well as professional musicians, which favours a demanding, enriching and cooperative working environment.
Along the same lines of promoting young talent, the second edition of the International Soloists Competition is also being held, an initiative that was launched last year and which has been very well received. This competition has a very clear objective: to select the soloist who will play in the closing concert with the festival orchestra. On this occasion, the competition was aimed at pianists, to select the soloist who will perform Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra in the two closing concerts of the programme.
The festival features soloists of the highest level, who participate as guest professors of the instrumental improvement course, such as Antonio Lasheras, horn soloist of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, and Javier Linares, professor of saxophone at the Granada Conservatory. In addition to this, there are other educational initiatives such as the lutherie and instrument repair workshop, given by Dulce Salazar, who attends from the workshop Al Vent (Alicante), as well as master classes, meetings and activities open to the public.
The programme kicks off on 3 July at the Casino de La Laguna, with a concert by the duo Fortecello, made up of the Polish cellist Anna Mikulska and the French pianist Philippe Argenty, who bring a musical proposal with a nod to classical flamenco, including works by the Spanish composers Gaspar Cassadó, Manuel de Falla and Enrique Granados.
The exhibition is sponsored by Fundación Disa and Cajasiete. All the information about the III Aguere International Music Festival is available on its official website:
https://festivalmusicaaguere.wixsite.com/agueremusicfest