If La Guancha can boast of anything, it is musical traditions. Proof of this is that written music reached the municipality before the roads. Already in 1924 it had a music band and, however, the tracks did so 52 years later, in 1982.
“Long live our band,” said the mayor, Antonio Hernández, yesterday, after presenting the extraordinary January concert, XXXI Juan Luis Reyes Memorial, on the occasion of the centenary of the La Esperanza Musical Group, founded on January 18, 1924 by Vicente Career and directed by Domingo Hernández González.
The event will take place on Saturday the 20th in the CEIP Plus Ultra pavilion, which will become an auditorium to host “a historical milestone for the band, the oldest cultural institution in the municipality,” said the president, who presented the institutional event accompanied of the current director, Jesús Agomar; the vice president of the XVIII de Enero Music Board, linked to the band since its beginnings, Felipe Falcón, and the Councilor for Culture, María José García.
Agomar announced that he has prepared a special repertoire of 120 minutes of music, with works carefully selected for the occasion and of different styles, which will begin with the pasodoble Don Domingo, a piece that cannot be missing in any performance of the band, because it is dedicated to its first director. It will be followed by a zarzuela repertoire accompanied by soloists Javier Jonás (baritone) and Cristina Farrais (Mezzo Soprano), and the public will have the opportunity to hear the premiere of Between the Wind and the Sea, 100 years of adventures, by the Murcian composer David Beltrán Martínez, the winning work of the Al Centenario International Composition Competition.
The 50 musicians of the group will perform pieces typical of the band musical language and there will be a special moment in which Anatael Mesa Quintero and Juan Antonio Hernández, former directors, will conduct two works in the second part. To all this will be added the boys and girls from 3 to 9 years old from the Municipal School of Music and Movement, who will perform the song Do re mi, from the movie The Sound of Music, “and there will be more surprises but they obviously cannot be revealed. ”, assured the director.
For his part, Felipe Falcón recalled that folkloric groups have rescued the famous guanchero tango “and that means that from time immemorial La Guancha already had its musical tradition and now we want to put on an extraordinary concert as the people deserve.”
To this end, the Culture area began setting up the concert yesterday because it is necessary to place special protection on the pavilion’s pavement, with the aim of beginning to install the stage on Monday and have the best acoustic conditions so that the band shines.
The Councilor for Culture made reference to the concert poster, designed by Jesús Alejandro Hernández, who is also a councillor, with a green background, like the municipality’s flag, and the color of hope with images of the band.
gold anchor
Within the framework of the concert, the Golden Anchor awards will be presented, a distinction with which the Board of Trustees recognizes people relevant to culture in the town. This year, the winners will be Felipe Falcón, Juan José Herrera and Fernando Quintero, three musicians who are still active and who, in addition to being part of the history of the institution and playing an instrument, “contribute their knowledge to new generations and are It is that human work that they do within the band that we want to recognize,” stressed Jesús Agomar.
