2024 Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival
In July 2024 the seventeenth edition of the Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival was held.
A festival directed since its beginnings by Dr. Sebastián Gil, professor at the Canary Islands Superior Conservatory of Music and active trumpet player on the Spanish and European scene.
From July 14 to 20, six prominent artists and professors of different nationalities met. Reinhold Friderich (Germany – International Soloist / Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe), Jeroen Berwaerts (Belgium – International Soloist – Hochschule für Musik Hannover), Pacho Flores (Venezuela – International Soloist), Dominique Bodart (Belgium – ARTS Ecole Supérieure des Arts Mons - Theo Charlier Trumpet Competition), Marcos García Vaquero (Spain - Madrid Symphony Orchestra and head of the Teatro Real) and Alfonso González Barquín (Spain - Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome - Superior Center of Music of the Basque Country “Musikene”) . As every year, students and professional trumpet players from more than 15 nationalities attended the festival (Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Estonia, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Turkey and Venezuela).
Expomeloneras
The festival takes place in Expomeloneras, a Congress Palace with a high logistical dating and an auditorium of almost 1000 seats. This multifunctional convention center has an area of 14,000 square meters, of which 9,264 are dedicated to holding congresses, conventions, seminars, exhibitions, concerts, sporting events, fashion shows, meetings and events of all kinds. This provides the Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival with an organizational capacity that gives the possibility of developing the entire event without leaving this space (Classes, conferences, exhibitions, concerts,...)
Lessons
Festival lessons were open with a limit of 60 active students. The pedagogical philosophy of this festival focuses on personalized attention to registered students and professionals, which is why a limit is created on the participation of active students. Every morning a warm-up session was held by a different teacher where different pedagogical approaches were presented from different paradigms and authors (Stamp, Clarke, Arban, Caruso, Cichowicz, ...). Then each group attended for the rest of the day with a different teacher, who organized their daily session depending on the level and requirements of the students (solo repertoire, orchestral excerpts, basic fundamentals, problems to be solved, learning difficulties...). This class organization system provides the attention of each enrolled student with all participating teachers and with an attention schedule of 5 hours a day. Perhaps this system, among other elements, is one of the secrets why students, year after year, fill the places offered at the Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival.
Concerts series
The Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival is accompanied by an important series of concerts where the importance of the trumpet repertoire is highlighted in many of its aspects, from ancient music to Jazz and contemporary music premieres. The established program focused on the “Las Tirajanas” Auditorium of Expomeloneras, although there were other spaces such as the “Ecumenical Temple” of Playa del Inglés and the emblematic Maspalomas Lighthouse. It should be noted that two of the main musical groups on the island were present, such as the Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gran Canaria Big Band.
Opening concert (14-07-24):
Sinatra 2.0 – Gran Canaria Big Band & Fasur Rodríguez Faro de Maspalomas
Brass Spectacular (16-07-24):
Brass Fusion (Belgium) – Dir: Dominique Bodart
Soloist: Sebastián Gil, Jeroen Berwaerts, Dominique Bodart
Expomeloneras
Around Gershwin (17-07-24):
Soloist: Pacho Flores, Reinhold Friedrich, Jeroen Berwaerts, Dominique Bodart, Marcos García Vaquero, Alfonso González Barquín.
Piano: Eriko Takezawa – Óliver Curbelo
Entropía (18-07-24):
Pacho Flores & Jesús “Pingüino” González
Templo Ecuménico “El Salvador”
The Magic of Baroque “Vivaldísimo” (19-07-24):
Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria
Soloists: Reinhold Friedrich, Jeroen Berwaerts, Marcos García Vaquero
Conductor/Concertmaister: Onder Baloglu
Jazz Night (20-07-24):
Chipi Chacón Latin Jazz Quintet
The 19th Hole Meloneras Jazz Club
Parallel activities
The Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival includes a series of parallel activities that address, in a wide spectrum, the different aspects of the trumpet. As well as, it commits to diversity and sustainable events.
- Orchestral Repertoire Competition: the ninth edition of this competition was held, which is always dedicated to the memory of the great Adolph Herseth. The winner was the Spanish trumpeter Javier Romero.
- International Meeting of Women Trumpet Players: in order to give visibility to the figure of women on the trumpet, this meeting is held every year in which different aspects of women trumpet players are valued. This year Nikoleta Popova (Bulgaria), Triin Ustav (Estonia) and Eriko Takezawa (Japan) participated.
- Youth Festival: the Festival dedicates a day to the youngest. It is a day where elementary students coexist with the great teachers who come to the festival. In this way the Festival attends to the future of the trumpet.
- Social Action: the Festival also organizes different activities to serve the population with less access to music. Older people, people with intellectual difficulties, reduced mobility, vulnerable population, population from rural areas,....
- Premieres: each year the festival commissions compositions of new works for the trumpet. This keeps the increase of literature active for our instrument. In this edition the resident composer was the Canarian Yul Ballesteros.
Maspalomas
Maspalomas is a tourist town in the south of Gran Canaria, one of the islands of the Spanish Canary archipelago. It is famous for its wide expanses of dunes on the coast, which surround the Maspalomas Dunes natural reserve, where several ecosystems coexist, such as the Charca lagoon, palm groves and dunes, habitat for a wide variety of birds. It has a high quality accommodation capacity that makes Maspalomas one of the great places for holding conferences and festivals, such as the Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival.
It is a heavenly place to combine learning and practicing the trumpet with the enjoyment of one of the most wonderful places in Spain. (Source: Sebastián Gil)