Flauta sin Fronteras 2006
On 26 September a press conference was hosted by the Fundación Cultural México-USA at Berlin 18. The conference was addressed by Elena Durán, the initiator of her project Flauta sin Fronteras; Gilberto Palmerín, Director General of the Fondación; Alejandro Estiville, Director General de Asuntos Cultural de SRE; Bertha Cea, Cultural Attaché of the US Embassy in Mexico; and by Michael Emmerson, Manager.
It was announced that the tour was being supported by The US Embassy in Mexico, SRE, CONACULTA, Fundación Cultural México-USA, FONCA, Fundación Televisa and by Elena herself who would not be receiving a fee for her work on this tour.
The following day, Elena Durán, her pianist Maestro Fausto Diaz and Michael Emmerson flew to El Paso on the first leg of the tour. On 28 September they visited two progressive schools in El Paso where Elena and Fausto played and Elena addressed many young people in both the Riverside Middle School and the Canutillo High School.
On Friday Elena explored Ciudad Juarez to discover more about its cultural roots and had an impromptu encuentro with several groups of street musicians at the Mercado with whom she played. On Saturday, 30th Elena and Fausto participated in the El Paso International Hispanic Festival by giving a recital in the beautiful, newly renovated City Art gallery whilst on Sunday 1st they played in Ciudad Juarez' Parque Central as part of the Second Chihuahua International Arts Festival.
Adair Margo, Chairman of the President's Committee for the Humanities and the Arts invited Elena and Michael to a lunch with Yolanda Alameda, Director of the El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department to discuss future activities in connection with Flauta sin Fronteras.
The Chihuahua Festival arranged for Elena and Fausto to play in Anapra, a suburb of Ciudad Juarez where many people has lost their homes in recent floods. A mobile stage and crew was provided by Nuevo Era Radio and set up in the middle of a community soccer pitch. In many ways this was the most touching and affecting concert of the whole tour and Elena promised to return next year. She spent a lot of time after the performance talking with the people and giving candy to the children.
On 4 October we flew from El Paso to San Diego and then was driven by representatives of the Mexican Consulate to Calexico where Elena and Fausto gave a concert to a mixed but predominantly young audience in the historic theatre of the San Diego State University's Imperial Valley Campus. Many contacts were made for a return visit next year.
The staff of the Instituto de Cultura de Baja California in Mexicali were outstanding and arranged two events for 5 October. The first was a visit to the Escuela Prim General Leonardo Bravo where forty three children share two small classrooms in the middle of the country. Their three excellent teachers had prepared them for the visit with stories about music, including the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and all of the children had painted musical pictures which they presented to Elena. In the evening was a concert in the Cultural Centre for a large, culturally diverse and enthusiastic audience. This day provided another highlight of the tour.
The tour concluded with a session for young people in the Centro Cultural Tijuana which we hope to visit again next year in the context of a more diverse programme.
When Elena first decided to make the tour along the Frontera she had envisaged it for the early part of 2007 but was encouraged to make it sooner in order to receive financial help from SRE during the present Administration. Whilst it was not a tour along the full length of the Border, it was an important first step since we all learned a lot in the planning and in the execution of such tours.
Throughout the tour, Elena and Fausto entertained a wide public with Mexican and American music drawn from a list of twenty composers from each country. Each programme was determined by the actual make up of the audience and the concerts, without exception, were enthusiastically received. In terms of Mexican repertoire, much of the music was taken from the wonderful salon repertoire whilst the most popular items of American music were the works by Henry Mancini, Scott Joplin and Stephen Foster.
We are now planning the Second Annual Flauta Sin Fronteras Tour for May 2007 and will apply many of the lessons learned. We will plan to be much more self-sufficient in terms of equipment and will travel with our own keyboard and sound system. Wherever possible, Elena will offer a multimedia programme in which she will play music derived from the Movies whilst the audience sees a capsule from the appropriate film.
We have learned that there are many people in the Border region who need music and the arts but who have little or no access to them in the normal course of their lives. Whilst this is true for many people in both countries, the need is all the greater in this area because of the tensions which are inherent in the geographical situation and in the present political climate.
Many people are already doing wonderful work in this region and we hope that we have done a little to enhance and further encourage that work. Additionally, with her flute, Elena hopes to have brought some inspiration to the young people with whom she came into contact on both sides of the Border.
We thank everyone who contributed in any way to the first Flauta sin Fronteras Tour and look forward to a longer and more extensive tour next year from 7 May to 9 June.
DR MICHAEL EMMERSON
OCTOBER 2006
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS WHO GAVE INVALUABLE ASSISTANCE TO THE FLAUTA SIN FRONTERAS TOUR
US EMBASSY IN MEXICO
Donna Roginski
Marjorie Coffin
Bertha Cea
SRE
Alejandro Estiville
Martha Gongález
Ma Teresa Cerón
FONDACION CULTURAL MEXICO- USA
Gilberto Palmarín
Viviana Aguirre
Amber Sharples
Mariana Delgado
CONACULTA
Alberto Fierro
FONCA
Mario Espinosa
FONADACION TELEVISA
Paulina Rocha
PIANIST
Maestro Fausto Diaz
LONDON ARTISTS
Monica Ruiz
ARVIZU ASSOCIATES
Alfredo Arvizu
Ma Teresa Gonzalez
CANAL 22
Rodolfo Ortega
WEBMASTER
José Luis Chavez
EL PASO INTERNATIONAL HISPANIC FESTIVAL
Belén Robles
Yvonne Sánchez
Enrique & Norman Armendariz
Diana Yellock, Riverside Middle School
Max Padilla, Canutillo High School
CHIHUAHUA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS
Ana Portillo
Pablo Juárez
José Gonzalez
Guillermina Serrano de Campuzano, Coordinadora Grupo Vulnerable
RADIO NUEVA ERA - MOBILE STAGE
Luis Felipe Alvarado Fierro
Armando Mendoza
Carlos Irigoyen
Daniel Reyes
Juan Simental
MEXICAN CONSULATE IN CALEXICO
Luis Guillermo Romero
Carlos Alberto Quiroz López
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
Stephen B W Roeder
INSTITUTO CULTURAL DE BAJA CALIFORNIA
Erika Guerrero
Miguel Angel Sandoval Espinosa
CENTRO CULTURAL TIJUANA
Claribel Bernal Cruz
FLAUTA SIN FRONTERAS
The following composers were represented on the tour:
Samuel Barber, Mario Ruiz Armengol, Amy Beach, Juan Carlos Calderón,
Robert Beaser, Alfredo Carrasco, Leonard Bernstein, Ricardo Castro, Aaron Copland, Carlos Chavez, John Corigliano, David España, Elena Durán, Carlos Espinosa, Arthur Foote, Blas Galindo, Lukas Foss, Bellisario de Jésus García, Stephen Foster, Agustín Lara, George Gershwin, Mario Lavista, Katherine Hoover, Armando Manzanero, Scott Joplin, José Sabre Marroquin,
Charles Koechlin, José Pablo Moncayo, Lowell Lierbermann, Enrique Mora,
Henry Mancini, Tata Nacho, Robert Muczynski, Manuel María Ponce, Walter Piston, Miguel Prado,
Gary Shocker, Mario Talavera, Walter Skolnik y Pedro Valdés Fraga
|
