The Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra celebrates two decades with 'Cantos isleos' - La Provincia

The Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 20th anniversary with the edition of its first record work, Island songs, in which he makes a pairing of classical and popular music.

This album, which was presented today by the president of Cabildo of Gran CanariaAntonio Morales, the conductor of the Orchestra, Rafael Sánchez-Araña, and its president, Rubén Sánchez, incorporates some of the best voices and timplistas canarias, among them to Benito Cabrera, Alba Pérez, Iván Quintana, Pancho Corujo, Germán López and Celso Albelo.

This is "an album that hosts a repertoire of ours, which represents us a lot because it contains very popular songs and canaries updated to a symphonic language and in which we have very special guests," said Sánchez-Araña, along with one of those guests, the timplist Benito Cabrera, author of the texts of the album and one of the soloists.

Island songs does a review of genres and songs that keep all their freshness, seasoned with interesting arrangements, melodic and rhythmic turns that give a new aesthetic value to the popular musical heritage.

In this disc there are versions of sorondongos canaries, in addition to Live Dance and the Malagueña, and titles as popular as Tamadaba and Shadows of the Cloud by Néstor Álamo. A potpourri of popular carols Canaries and a look at Venezuela, with the theme Llanera Soul.

20 years of success

The Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra was born in 1999 with the support of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and with the hope of consolidating itself as a agglutinator of a new musical sap, where young talent and the experience of consecrated performers would shake hands on stage common.

All of them have been an important part of an Orchestra that in these twenty years has alternated its extensive program of concerts with collaborations for other festivals and artists of different styles.

Among them, they have participated with Amigos Canarios de la Zarzuela, Amigos Canarios de la Ópera, Canary Islands Music Festival and The Sabandeños, and they have accompanied singers like Mary Sánchez, Pedro Guerra and Isabel Pantoja during her last concert in the Canary Islands, demonstrating her versatility in all stages and musical styles.

And without a doubt, the most massive of all his concerts is the one that is repeated every year at Christmas: the Popular New Year's Concert in the Symphony Hall of Alfredo Kraus Auditorium, which in its last edition came to complete the entire capacity in its four functions, and that it is already an unavoidable annual event for all Grancanarians.

In addition, the Symphony has had the honor of being the titular orchestra of the Lustrales Festival of the Bajada de la Virgen in La Palma in its last two editions and has starred in musical projects of great social and historical importance, such as the work The rebellion of the southerners, which musically narrates an event that happened three centuries ago in Gran Canaria and has recently been represented in the Theater Pérez Galdós with great public success.

Since 2017 he has become a resident orchestra of the Auditorium Theater of Agüimes, so in the presentation of this album they were surrounded by the mayor of this municipality, Óscar Hernández.

The commitment to local talent and the quality of its shows have been two of the fundamental pillars of this great orchestra that has been proud to be directed by prestigious directors, such as Gudio Ajmon-Marsan, Patrick Baton, José Brito, José María Damunt, Ricardo Frizza and Montserrat Font Marco, who along with other directors have facilitated that the young musicians of Gran Canaria acquire an important orchestral experience.

At present, the Las Palmas Symphony Orchestra is made up of more than 150 musicians Of great talent, they offer concerts and musical projects throughout the year in different formats, sometimes as a small orchestra of between 8 and 10 musicians, and on other occasions they reach seventy-five musicians, as is the case of the great Carmina Burana concert that took place on June 1 in the Auditorium to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Orchestra.

Besides, his chorus, which was born in April 2018, is directed by vocalist and singing pedagogy expert, Maite Robaina. She directs a hundred voices that join the great musical projects of the Symphony to give even greater spectacularity to the concerts.