Chineke! Junior Orchestra & Glass Marcano in a compelling concert
The British Chineke! Junior Orchestra is extraordinary! It gives young people of colour from countless ethnic backgrounds a music platform and guarantees festive and exciting concerts. Especially when Glass Marcano is conducting! Taking place at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, it's set to be an exciting and compelling concert.
Here's an overview of the performers at the concert:
Chineke! Junior Orchestra
Conductor: Glass Marcano
Piano: Gerard Aimontche
Photo: Mark Allan
About the conductor Glass Marcano
The Venezuelan conductor Glass Marcano is a rising star in the male-dominated world of classical music conductors. She won the "La Maestra Competition", the first-ever International Competition for Women Conductors in Paris last September. There were 12 competitors selected from a list of 200 applicants, representing 51 nationalities.
She has played the violin in youth orchestras since she was four years old and listens to rap. As a conductor, she has excelled in tackling a variety of challenging classical music works from all over the world.
About the concert programme
At the Concertgebouw on August 13, 2022, the orchestra will present a remarkable and varied programme. The evening starts with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Othello Suite, a work full of contrasts that he wrote for a performance of Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name.
Pianist Gerard Aimontche, a Russian with African roots, who has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, will be the soloist in the Dutch premiere of Stewart Goodyear's Callaloo - Caribbean Suite. An exciting and inventive work full of surprises that shares all the joy and colour of a Caribbean carnival.
Surprises can also be found, but in a very different way, in Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. The work starts with a fanfare, but at the same time, the composer constantly keeps the listener aware of what he calls "the fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness ... There is nothing to be done but to submit to it and lament in vain". Glass Marcano learned this compelling work by heart when she was ten and her performances of it as a conductor have been critically acclaimed.
