Mond Muziko – Music for Peace Charity Concert

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The Maestro Valle University Orchestra of the ULPGC, conducted by José Brito, is giving a charity concert in support of the Barrios Orquestados project in Honduras, with an attractive programme that brings together world music from different traditions and styles, and which will feature the participation of Celia Jiménez, mezzo-soprano soloist, and the choir of the Maestro Valle University Orchestra of the ULPGC, conducted by Héctor Rodríguez de Armas. And suddenly, as if it were the product of an unheard-of ancestral spell that had just been discovered, there existed a language with which we all understood each other: kings and queens, their advisers, politicians, businesswomen, labourers, nuns… Everyone was absolutely engrossed. “How is it possible that we haven’t discovered it before?” “How is it that no one had deigned to dust it off from silence?” “It has never been easy to discover what one did not expect to find,” said the pharmacist. A poet observed, “we never imagined that the key to the irrationality of humanitarian action lay in language rather than in the gaze.” “Esperanto, at last!” shouted a researcher. “Why wait so long?” snapped the baker. “No, I mean that the language of peace between peoples is called Esperanto.” “And why Esperanto?” replied the doctor. “Because it belongs to no one and it belongs to all the creatures of the planet.” And a wise woman concluded: “because, like music, it knows nothing of borders, nothing of possessions, nothing of hatred or religions, nothing of wars.” The teacher concluded, “Esperanto because, like music, it knows only beauty, love and peace.” One more year, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Barrios Orquestados and the Auditorio y Teatro Foundation of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria join forces to organise a new charity concert in favour of the Barrios Orquestados project in Honduras. Approximately 60 members make up the Maestro Valle University Orchestra of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. It is a diverse and flexible group of students from the Professional Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Higher Conservatory of Music of the Canary Islands, as well as trainee musicians coming from social projects such as Barrios Orquestados, or students from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria who develop an instrumental skill as an activity parallel to their university studies, and external musicians who lend their professional support, all under the baton of José Brito, composer and director of the Barrios Orquestados project. Barrios Orquestados is not only a pedagogical project with artistic aims; it is a social project of a pedagogical nature that aims to create bowed string orchestras (violins, violas, cellos and double basses) and woodwind ensembles (flute, clarinet and saxophone), and choirs in the outlying neighbourhoods of the Canary Islands. Conceived by the musician José Brito, the initiative has already reached many children in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. In 2018 it took its first international leap to implement the project, travelling to Tegucigalpa (Honduras). In 2019, a team of professionals from the project travelled again to Honduras, and activities also began in Valparaíso (Chile). Romanian Dances – Béla Bartók Aires de Venezuela – Traditional (arr. José Terenzio) Dialogue on Flowers – Yuan-kai Bao La comparsa – Ernesto Lecuona (arr. Octavio Suárez) Alfonsina y el mar – Ariel Ramírez and Félix Luna (arr. David Masperi) Fantasy on Mali – Carlos Vega Gran Canaria – Manuel Melián (arr. Manuel Bonino)