HOUSTON, TX (September 18, 2024) — An annual Houston tradition dating back to 1992, Fiesta Sinfónica celebrates Houston’s diversity through the significant contributions of great Hispanic and Latin American composers. This year, newly appointed Houston Symphony Associate Conductor Gonzalo Farias leads the orchestra in a program that includes the world premiere of renowned Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Guitar Concerto, featuring Spanish Classical Guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas, Friday, September 27, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Hall. This marks Houston’s first opportunity to hear its orchestra in Jones Hall after the newest acoustic renovations that took place over the summer, including the addition of an acoustic reflector at the top of the stage proscenium.
The eclectic program draws from all corners of Latin America, comprising Costa Rican composer Andrés Soto’s “En el Barco viene una Rosa,” the fifth movement from his Suite No. 1 from the symphonic story La Rosa y el Niño; Chilean composer Enrique Soro’s Danza fantástica; Peruvian singer-songwriter Chabuca Grande’s La flor de la canela (“The Cinnamon Flower”); the duo tango El choclo y la cumparsita (“The Corn” and “The Little Parade”) composed by Argentinean Angel Villoldo and Uruguay’s Gerardo Moto respectively; Alma llanera (“Soul of the Plains”) by Venezuelan composer Elías Gutiérrez; the calypso song Cachita by Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández; and Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2, as well as the world premiere of his Guitar Concerto.
Fiesta Sinfónica takes place Friday, September 27, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, 615 Louisiana Street, in Houston’s Theater District. This concert will have no intermission. For tickets and information, please call or text 713.224.7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. Tickets are free to the general public and are available at the Houston Symphony Patron Services Center in Jones Hall (Monday–Saturday, 12–6 p.m.). All programs and artists are subject to change.
Fiesta Sinfónica is made possible through the support of Chevron. Additional support provided by Univision Houston and Amor 106.5FM, our Hispanic media partners.
Fiesta Sinfónica
September 27, 2024 @ 7:30 p.m., Jones Hall
Gonzalo Farias, conductor
Pablo Sáinz Villegas, guitar
A. Soto: Suite No. 1 from La Rosa y el Niño
Soro: Danza Fantástica
Granda/T. Álvarez: La flor de la canela
Villoldo-Matos/A. Drago: El choclo & la cumparsita
Gutiérrez/V. Meza: Alma Llanera
Hernández/Cerón: Cachita
A. Márquez: Guitar Concerto
A. Márquez: Danzón No. 2
About Gonzalo Farias
An engaging orchestral conductor, award-winning pianist, and passionate educator, Gonzalo Farias is the Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony. In an ever-changing world, Gonzalo’s desire is to establish music-making as a way of rethinking our place in society by cultivating respect, trust, and cooperation among all people in our community.
Gonzalo Farias served previously as the Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, the Associate Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony, the Assistant Conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and Conducting Fellow at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Praised by his “clear, engaging” style “with a lyrical, almost Zen-like quality”, Farias has been established “as a focused, musical artist who knows what he wants and how to get it – with grace and substance.” As former Music Director of the Joliet Symphony Orchestra, Farias embraced the city of Joliet and its Hispanic residents of the greater Chicago area with pre-concert lectures, Latin-based repertoire, and a unique side-by-side bilingual narration of Bizet’s Carmen.
Farias was recently selected to conduct at the esteemed Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview, the most important showcase for conductors in America. Designed by the League of American Orchestras, the National Conductor Preview chooses the most promising talents in the world for their podium gift and commitment to the future of American orchestras. Farias was also appointed by the National Endowment for the Arts as a reviewing member for the Grant for Art Projects, judging applications from diverse music institutions to support the latest and most important artistic endeavors in the US.
During the summers, Farias has worked with Jaap Van Zweden and Johannes Schlaefli at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival in Switzerland as well as with Neeme and Paavo Järvi at the Pärnu Music Festival. In the United States, he was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Bruno Walter Memorial Conducting Scholarship at the Cabrillo Music Festival and named “Emergent Conductor” by Victor Yampolsky at the Peninsula Music Festival. He also attended the Pierre Monteux Festival where he received the Bernard Osher Scholar Prize. Out of 566 applicants and 78 countries, he was chosen as one of 24 finalists in the prestigious 2018 Malko Conducting Competition with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Hailed by the Gramophone magazine critics, Farias offered one the “most fluent, honest, open-hearted and pointed performances”.
Farias was born in Santiago de Chile, where he began his piano studies at age five. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the P.C. University of Chile and then continued his graduate piano studies at the New England Conservatory as a full-scholarship student of Wha-Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. He has won first prize at the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition and awards at the Maria Canals and Luis Sigall Piano Competitions. As a conductor, Farias attended the University of Illinois working with Donald Schleicher, the Peabody Conservatory with Marin Alsop, and worked privately with Larry Rachleff and Otto-Werner Mueller.
Besides having a fond love for piano, chamber, and contemporary music, Farias is a passionate supporter of second-order cybernetics as a way to help understand communication and how complex systems organize, coordinate, and interconnect with one another. This includes the interdependent and recursive nature of musical experiences, in which performers and audiences alike interact, respond, and co-create each other’s space. His final Doctoral thesis “Logical Predictions and Cybernetics” explores the case of Cornelius Cardew’s “The Great Learning” to redefine music activity as a self-organized organization. In addition to that, he has a warm affection for his formal studies of Zen Buddhism, which has been a major influence on his approach to music and life.
About Pablo Sáinz Villegas
Undoubtedly the most virtuoso guitarist of his generation, Pablo Sainz-Villegas has been acclaimed by the international press as the successor to Andrés Segovia and a world ambassador of Spanish culture. He is the first solo guitarist to perform at Carnegie Hall since Maestro Andrés Segovia did so in 1983, the first to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2001, and the first to perform with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the New Year’s Eve Gala since 1983.
Since his debut with the New York Philharmonic, he has performed in more than 40 countries and with orchestras such as the Israel Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, and the National Orchestra of Spain, as well as in venues such as the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, among others.
Pablo’s most notable milestones include the Princess of Asturias Awards Concert and his participation in the Metropolitan Opera Gala last May at the Palace of Versailles. His numerous performances at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, which captivated more than 85,000 attendees, as well as concerts held in distinguished venues such as Chicago’s Grant Park, Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio, and the Hollywood Bowl, have made him one of this generation’s most prolific performers.
As a socially committed artist, he founded the U.S. non-profit association Strings in Common. He is also the creator and artistic director of the La Rioja Festival in Spain.
An exclusive artist for SONY Classical, Pablo has released three albums. His latest project, The Blue Album, was released in 2023.
Highlights of his 2024-25 Season include the premier of Arturo Márquez’s Guitar Concerto; a Colombian tour with the National Orchestra of Spain; a solo tour in Taiwan; performances at Teatro Real of Madrid, Carnegie Hall, and Hollywood Bowl; and with orchestras such as Brussels Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, among others.
Pablo was born in La Rioja, Spain, and has lived in the United States since 2001.
About Houston Symphony
Under Music Director Juraj Valčuha, the Houston Symphony continues its second century inspiring and engaging a large and diverse audience in Houston and beyond through exceptional musical performances, and creating enduring impact in the Houston community. One of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas, the Symphony held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston on June 21, 1913. Today, with an operating budget of $40.7 million, the full-time ensemble of professional musicians presents more than 130 concerts annually, making it the largest performing arts organization in Houston. Traditionally, musicians of the orchestra and the Symphony’s Community-Embedded Musicians also offer nearly 600 community-based performances each year at various schools, community centers, hospitals, senior centers, and churches, annually reaching nearly 200,000 people in Greater Houston in addition to Jones Hall.
After suspending concert activities in March 2020, the Symphony successfully completed a full 2020–21 season with in-person audiences and weekly livestreams of each performance, making it one of the only orchestras in the world to do so. The Houston Symphony remains committed to livestreaming its 2024-25 Season to a broad audience in over 45 countries and all 50 states, one of few American orchestras dedicated to transmitting live performances to a sizeable audience outside its home city through this technology. The Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony has recorded under various prestigious labels, including Koch International Classics, Naxos, RCA Red Seal, Telarc, Virgin Classics, and, most recently, Dutch recording label Pentatone. In 2017, the Houston Symphony was awarded an ECHO Klassik award for the live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck under the direction of former Music Director Hans Graf. The orchestra earned its first Grammy nomination and Grammy Award at the 60th annual ceremony for the same recording in the Best Opera Recording category. The Symphony’s most recent recordings include a Pentatone release in January 2022 of its world premiere performances of Jimmy López Bellido’s Aurora and Ad Astra, and a Naxos release in July 2023 of its world premiere performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Duo Duel.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Eric Skelly: 713.337.8560, eric.skelly@houstonsymphony.org
Madison Mann: 832.930.4065 x120, madison@theckpgroup.com