Benidorm organ festival
By Barry Wright BENIDORM’S international organ festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a series of seven performances taking place between today (Friday, February 25) and December 17.
For the first time some of the performances will feature other instruments and audiovisual productions.
All performances take place on the organ at Sant Jaume y Santa Anna church and start at 20.00.
During the presentation, councillor for culture Jaime Jesús Pérez noted that the ‘magnificent’ church organ is ‘one of the best in the Valencia region’.
“Throughout its 10 years, the festival has become one of the most relevant of its kind at a national level and coinciding with the 10th anniversary we wanted to make the event even more attractive by introducing a series of innovations that enrich it and give it a different character to others that take place around the country.”
Five of the concerts will see the organ complemented by other instruments, or will be performances in which the music will be presented with other arts, such as cinema or
literature.
Admission is free until the venue reaches capacity.
Here is the schedule: Friday, February 25: Recital by Jordi Vergés i Riart, principal organist at Tarragona cathedral
Friday, March 25: Yuzuru Hiranaka, winner of various international prizes and organ teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music
Friday, April 29: Organist Mónica Melcova will perform improvised music to a screening of the black and white Charlie Chaplin film The Kid Friday, May 27: Teleman Trío will give a concert of music for organ, trumpet and soprano
Friday, October 28: Recital by the organist Miriam Cepeda and clarinettist Luis Alberto Requejo
Friday, November 25: Concert for organ and four saxophones with Enrico Tricario and the Lumina Ensemble Saturday, December 17: Narration of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf by the actress Gurutze Beitia, accompanied by a four-hand organ performance, and ‘seasoned’ with a Chinese shadow theatre production