Cadiz hosts in November the 14th Spanish Music Festival with over sixty shows

19/10/2016

Between 11-27 November, music will fill the plazas, street sand indoors of the city with its 14th Spanish Music Festival in Cadiz, a city that has always had a very special relationship with music. The Festival returns with a programme full of musical gems, curiosities, surprises and commemorations.

The opening, which promises to be outrageously fun, will be outdoor with Música a los cuatro vientos, in Plaza de San Juan de Dios in Cadiz. The opening concert, at the Conference Centre, will be organised by the distinguished ancient music band Al Ayre Español, recently bestowed the National Music Award and directed by Eduardo López Banzo, who will face the music of one of the great authors of Baroque Spanish, Juan Manuel del Puente, with the work of his contemporaries from the rest of Europe, like Antonio Vivaldi and George Handel.

The city will be filled by music, with over sixty shows across different towns of the bay. Puerto de Santa María, San Fernando and also Conil de la Frontera will be the protagonists of the festival which this year sounds under the Plural Female motto and which will use the Gran Teatro Falla as its main stage.

Cadiz and music

The programme will recover uncommon works, like chamber opera Cendrillon, written at the height of Romanticism by the French-Spanish composer Pauline García Viardot, providing a version co-produced by the Spanish Music Festival in Cadiz and the Chamber Opera in Warsaw.

Pauline G. Viardot was the daughter of Manuel García, the favourite tenor of Rossini, who lived in Cadiz and took opera to America.

The festival will pay special attention to music written by women throughout history.

The musical creation expands to all areas of music with a programme in tribute of Vainica Doble, a decisive group in the history of Spanish pop of the most committed and persistent influence on successive generations.

As part of Andalusian Day of Flamenco, one of the most successful and impactful shows of recent Flamenco Biennial of Seville will be presented, starring Rocío Márquez: Old and new dialogue of sounds, which comes to be a dialogue between the flamenco voice of Rocío Márquez and the viola de gamba of Fahmi Alqhai, on a tour which includes a major part of the history of Spanish music.

The Spanish Music Festival in Cadiz is the only festival dedicated specifically to Spanish music and is organised by the Andalusian Agency of Cultural Institutions of the Cultural Department of the Regional Government of Andalusia, in conjunction with various institutions and organisations.

Many commemorations

The Festival of Cadiz is held in autumn because it coincides with the anniversary of the birth of Manuel de Falla, Cadiz composer of universal reach, which inaugurated the musical modernity of Spain.

One of the most awaited nights will be the Festival's presentation of the Sevillian pianist Juan Pérez Floristán, the winner of the Paloma O'Shea Contest, who will perform alongside the Cordoba Orchestra the Concierto en Sol by Maurice Ravel (a work of distinctly Spanish inspiration) and Noches en los jardines de España by Manuel de Falla work that this year celebrates the centenary of its birth.

The commemorative programme of the City of Granada Orchestra with several compositions by Enrique Granados, one hundred years since his death, with the stage work by Manuel de Falla El corregidor y la molinera, also celebrating one hundred years since it was composed.

The Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra, with soprano Irina Levián, comes with a lyrical programme that combines zarzuela and Italian opera of Spanish inspiration. The Seville Royal Symphony Orchestra reappears at the festival with its new director, John Axelrod, to perform alongside the excellent guitarist José María Gallardo del Rey the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, among other works.

Outstanding ancient music groups, like Al Ayre Español, Vandalia and Ars Atlántica, the Conjunto Vocal e Instrumental Virelay or La Tempestad, embark on the decisive role of focusing the spotlight on our best repertoires of the Renaissance, Baroque and the Classicism.

Concerts by artists who personify the uniqueness and the heterodoxy, as El Niño de Elche, with a more experimental project; the Indie-pop group Lorena Álvarez y su banda Municipal in its most personal tribute to Vainica Doble, or Electric Pleasures, an unusual historicist band headed by Juan Carlos Rivera, blend with numerous releases of modern music and musical and theatrical productions conceived expressly for their debut at the Festival.

The world premiere will take place, by the Cuarteto de la Habana, of twelve compositions by some of the greatest Spanish authors of our time under the shared titled of Doce Miniaturas Contundentes, inspired by their rejection of violence in all of its forms.

Family Concerts, activities for children, exhibitions, workshops, courses and different professional exchanges, make for this edition of the Festival to convert the city of Cadiz and its surroundings for three weeks into a vital meeting place of Spanish music.

A festival that promotes enjoyment of the repertoire of Spanish music across all of its times, genres and styles, with special emphasis on the recovery of our most valuable musical heritage and with special attention to the most creative, innovative music today.

This year it wants to increase the visibility of women in the history of music: as an interpreter, as transmitter of so much wisdom, as inspiration, as promoter of unique projects, or decisive authors in the avant-garde ofour artistic present day.

The agreements between the Festival and different bodies and entities, such as the Ministry of Culture, the Town Hall of Cadiz, Fundación Cajasol, University of Cadiz, Provincial Council of Cadiz, Fundación SGAE, Acción Cultural Española (AE/C), the Association of Singers and Performers, the Local Government of Cadiz, Newspaper of Cadiz, the town halls of San Fernando, El Puerto de Santa María and Conil, or the alliances established with different professionals and associations of the arts, such as Qultura, Musicario, Amigos de la Música of the Bay of Cadiz, the Association of Classical Music Festivals of Spain (Festclásica) or the Network of Organisers of Educational Performances (ROCE) are, no doubt, factors that will promote the richness of content, dissemination and impact of this new edition ofthe Spanish Music Festival in Cadiz.