The concert will take place on Friday, July 25 at 8:00 p.m. at the Palacio de Formación y Congresos.
Fuerteventura welcomes the Youth Orchestra of the Canary Islands with its ‘Carnival of the animals’.
The formation is presented in chamber format, under the direction of Víctor Pablo Pérez and with the musician and humorist Víctor Lemes as narrator.
There will be sign language interpreters on stage, as well as special devices for the hearing impaired, free of charge.
The Youth Orchestra of the Canary Islands (JOCAN) will perform the famous work ‘The Carnival of the Animals’ by Camille Saint Saëns in Fuerteventura, where the public can also hear the island version entitled ‘The Carnival of the Canary Animals’. It will be on July 25, at 20.00 pm, at the Palace of Training and Congresses, in a concert in chamber format directed by Victor Pablo Perez, and with a funny script and narration by the musician and comedian Victor Lemes. Tickets are available at ecoentradas.com.
It will be part of a tour of several islands of the archipelago, in which there will also be a special free device for the hearing impaired, who will be able to ‘hear’ the concerts through sensory backpacks.
Program
The concert will begin with the interpretation of some fragments of ‘El Carnaval de los animales canarios’, in which the island composers Celia Rivero and Sergio Rodriguez, put music to several animals that are linked to the archipelago, among others the giant lizard of El Hierro, the eared bat, the hawkbill bird, the blind crab of Lanzarote and the blue whale; and also the aquaviva, the tiger butterfly, the Canarian camel, the grouper, the giant tortoise of Tenerife and the sardine. In this case, under the direction of the young Santiago Padilla.
The second part, which incorporates Víctor Lemes as narrator, will be for ‘The Carnival of the Animals’. This piece was composed by Saint-Saëns in 1886 and is a suite in fourteen movements that he made during a vacation in Austria as a kind of musical joke to entertain his friends. In fact, he forbade it to be published or performed during his lifetime, with the exception of the movement ‘The Swan’, which he considered serious and beautiful. So the work was publicly premiered after his death in 1922 and became very popular since then, since, although it is a humorous work, it is composed with great mastery and deep knowledge of instrumental color.
In each of these movements, an animal or scene is depicted with a humorous and parodic touch. For example, in the movement ‘Fossils’, Saint-Saëns parodies himself and other colleagues such as Rossini and Offenbach. The piece will be conducted by Víctor Lemes, who has created an amusing script to accompany the orchestra and act as narrator in the concert.
With pianists for the first time
One of the novelties of this year is that, for the first time, two young pianists will participate in the JOCAN , namely Gabriel Álvarez Doreste and Natalia Dionis Rodríguez, chosen in a recent public call. They will be joined on stage by a selection of musicians chosen from the instrumentalists’ pool of the Youth Orchestra: Unai Marrero Simón (clarinet); Érika Gutiérrez Castillo (double bass), Sara Lorenzo González (flute); Raúl Fernández Morales (percussion); Liz Flor González Durán (viola); Marie Cooper Aube (violin); Inés Ruiz Ortiz de Antiñano (violin) and Aurora Fibla Tejedas (cello).
Young musicians from the different islands of the Canary Islands, who are currently in the last year of their academic musical training in centers around the world, or recent graduates. For this tour, the JOCAN will once again count on the young conductor, Santiago Padilla, who accompanied the orchestra in its formative part during last year’s tour, three years after being selected in a specific public call. On this occasion he will also be responsible for conducting one of the pieces in the program, ‘El carnaval de los animales canarios’.
Inclusive concerts
Given the good reception of its last tour, JOCAN is once again providing its concerts with some initiatives that will make them inclusive and accessible to everyone, including people with hearing disabilities. To this end, and in collaboration with Fundación DISA, which assumes this sponsorship, it provides the public with sensory backpacks with which people with hearing problems will be able to enjoy this experience more fully.
There will be ten of these devices, which will be provided free of charge upon request, starting July 14, by e-mail to jocan@icdcultural.org and invitations will be managed on a first-come, first-served basis. Likewise, and as ‘The Carnival of the Animals’ by Saint-Saëns incorporates the figure of the narrator, there will also be an interpreter of Spanish Sign Language LSE on stage .
JOCAN is a project of the Government of the Canary Islands launched in 2016 as a tool for the training and orchestral practice of young musicians from the islands. A program that materializes with the organization of the so-called Encounters, which several times a year bring together members of the orchestra to prepare a wide range of repertoires that are then performed on tour. All this with the help of a select group of professors and teachers, in addition to being able to work with great international soloists.
This meeting will be the 23rd since the launching of JOCAN. A week before the start of the tour, the members of these concerts will meet in Tenerife for seven sessions dedicated to training, study, coexistence, rehearsals and preparations.
JOCAN Summer Tour (July 2025)
The tour organized by Cultura del Gobierno de Canarias will start on Monday, July 21 at Espacio La Granja, in Tenerife; and will continue on July 23 at Teatro Guiniguada, in Gran Canaria; Thursday 24 at Teatro Municipal de San Bartolomé, in Lanzarote; the following day, Friday 25 atPalacio de Formación y Congresos de Fuerteventura; and Sunday 27 at Auditorio de La Gomera. The closing concert will be on Tuesday 29th at the Teatro Circo de Marte, in La Palma.
§ Monday 21: Espacio La Granja, in Tenerife
§ Wednesday 23: Guiniguada Theater, in Gran Canaria
§ Thursday 24: Municipal Theater of San Bartolomé, in Lanzarote
§ Friday 25: Palacio de Formación y Congresos, in Fuerteventura
§ Sunday 27: Auditorio Insular, in La Gomera
§ Tuesday 29: Teatro Circo de Marte, in La Palma
All concerts start at 20.00h.
+ Info and tickets: https://www.icdcultural.org/jocan
