One month from today I will be in Argentina, teaching and performing at the Isla Verde Bronces Festival. I am very excited about the festival, and my first trip ever to South America.
Coincidentally, Bueneos Aires was featured this morning on Rudy Maxa’s World, a travel show on PBS. I always new Buenos Aires was one of the world’s largest cities, but I was surprised to hear it referred to as the “most European city in the Western Hemisphere”. The show also detailed the economic troubles that Argentina faced in the 90′s, and I was pleased to hear that counter-intuitively, the arts not only thrived during that time, but boomed despite, and perhaps in reaction to the country’s economic and political woes. Perhaps this is a lesson for the rest of the world?
Since 2007, the small town of Isla Verde – about 5 hours from Buenos Aires – has hosted this festival. From their website, here are the festival’s aims:
• To offer training, motivation and direction to every person, especially children and young people, that wants to pursue the study of a brass instrument.
• To gain national and international recognition for Isla Verde as annual meeting point for brass musicians, by providing location and artistic resources suitable for training and improvement.• To promote artistic exchange between the participants of this event.
• To continue organizing this International Brass Festival Isla Verde Bronces as an activity that gives identity to our town.
• To enrich the cultural activities in our town and surrounding areas.
The most exciting aspect, for me, will be performing a brand new work I commissioned from the noted Argentine composer, Roberto Pintos. You can hear some of his compositions on YouTube, including this one, Algo insoluble, featuring Adam Frey on euphonium and Patricio Consentino.
