Press

For PostClassical Ensemble, it is not enough to complain about the monotony, or the ethnic or social bias, of symphonic programs. [Horowitz and Angel Gil-Ordóñez] devise alternatives… They produce stimulating evidence the music belongs to life and to the cultural and political environment of the times in which it was created… Classical music needs to leave the confinement of concert halls.

The Indonesian gamelan will be the centerpiece of PostClassical Ensemble’s latest musical creation, Cultural Fusion: The Gamelan Experience, on Jan. 23 at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez and Perspectives Ensemble have recorded two of Manuel de Falla’s dramatic works –El retablo de Maese Pedro and El Amor Brujo (in its 1915 version). Esperanza Fernández, one of Spain’s leading exponents of flamenco art, joined the ensemble for El Amor Brujo. Sessions for this Naxos release, due in April, took place at the end of summer in Scarsdale, New York.

When patrons of the 40th annual Havana Film Festival in Cuba enter the city’s Cine la Rampa on December 8, they’ll be treated to an unexpected viewing experience – a conductor and an orchestra beneath the venue’s large projection screen. DC-based conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez will lead Cuba’s Mozart Lyceum Orchestra of Havana in a live performance of the score to classic Mexican neo-doc, Redes.

At our performance, the chorale was consecrated by stained-glass windows. Angel Gil-Ordóñez is a sovereign conductor of all and any slow-motion music. Our exceptional concertmaster, Nati Draiblate, was the violin soloist.

Extending for 530 feet, the nave of Washington National Cathedral, the world’s sixth largest, can easily accommodate several orchestras. On Jan. 23, it held three: PostClassical Ensemble, directed by Angel Gil-Ordóñez; the Indonesian Embassy Javanese Gamelan, directed by Pak Muryanto; and the Indonesian Embassy Balinese Gamelan, directed by I. Nyoman Suadin.

These days, the word fusion, especially in the context of food but also in discussions of the arts, has become a cliché. But here was a vivid, persuasive argument in favor of embracing a fluid world culture.

Adventurous programming is a hallmark of the Post-Classical Ensemble. This “experimental music laboratory,” now in its 15th year, explored the profound influence that gamelan has had on Western classical composers in a three-hour concert at the cathedral, its new home, on Wednesday night.

There have been a couple of recordings of El amor brujo in its original, two-act chamber version of 1915, but this one is as fine as any and just might be the best around. Conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez chooses ideal tempos, the members of the Perspectives Ensemble play beautifully, and everyone seems genuinely involved in projecting Falla’s characterful instrumental parts with just the right combination of precision and warmth (…) Once again the performance is excellent from all concerned, and both pieces are very well recorded.

Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo is best known nowadays in the form of the one-act ballet pantomime, first performed in 1924. But it began in 1915 as a much less conventional dance piece, involving spoken narrations and a cantaora, a flamenco singer, with an ensemble of just 15 players. Though the Naxos recording from the Perspectives Ensemble under Angel Gil-Ordóñez claims to be of that 1915 version, it actually uses a much larger body of strings than the original. But with Esperanza Fernández as the cantaora, there’s no lack of bite and raw intensity, and paired with an equally pungent account of another of Falla’s utterly original music-theatre pieces, the chamber opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro, it’s a really desirable bargain.

On the one hand, it is slimmer, fresher and more colorful than the revised version, but on the other it is also more sensual. The wonderful flamenco singer Esperanza Fernandez also gives the music a lot of authenticity. Gil-Ordóñez conducts very lively and with great intensity. The small chamber opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro uses an episode from Cervantes’s Don Quixote and is characterized by a very unusual instrumentation. In this recording it gets exquisite colours and a thrilling rhythm. Jennifer Zetlan is outstanding in the role of the little Trujaman, and tenor Jorge Garza as Master Pedro and baritone Alfredo Garcia as Don Quixote are also convincing. The recorded sound is also excellent, so that this is a highly recommendable production.

Although generally deemed the greatest Spanish composer of the first part of the 20th century, Manuel de Falla remains something of an acquired taste outside his homeland. Really first-rate performances of his music, such as those led by Angel Gil-Ordóñez on a new Naxos CD, help explain why.

The Ensemble’s latest innovative programming series, with the South Dakota Symphony, examines the controversial relationship of Native American and American identity through music.

Conductor Angel Gil-Ordoñez has always had a passion for music. So much so, that he convinced his parents to let him study music in college at the Madrid Conservatory of Music, as long as he would first study Engineering at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. He completed both degrees and then continued with his musical education and career.

Silence –it’s in the still seconds as a a conductor raises his arms. It’s also what Angel Gil-Ordóñez, music director of DC-based PostClassical Ensemble, calls the “condition” for sound. “As my teacher and mentor, Sergiu Celibidache, used to say, “Sound is not music,” he recalls. “Sound, under certain circumstances, can become music.”

I love conducting so much, a dream day would include rehearsing a Haydn symphony in one of my favorite spaces in Washington, the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress. When I conduct Haydn, I am the happiest person in the world. I love his sense of humor and simplicity. Everything is so clear, and at the same time so fine, so elegant. The Coolidge Auditorium is such an intimate space, it was made for chamber music.

Featured works include music from his score for the movie Psycho, his Clarinet Quintet Souvenirs de Voyage, and the radio play Whitman with music by Herrmann, in honor of the bicentennial of Whitman’s birth. This program, which was broadcast live earlier this month from the cathedral, will be hosted by author, music historian and PostClassical Ensemble co-founder Joseph Horowitz, PostClassical Music Director and co-founder Maestro Angel Gil-Ordonez, Exploring Music host Bill McGlaughlin and WWFM host David Osenberg.

We spoke with Ángel Gil-Ordóñez and Alfredo García, director and baritone, protagonists of El Retablo de Maese Pedro, by Manuel de Falla, recently recorded in the United States. Gil-Ordónez is one of the best ambassadors of Spanish music in the United States, and presents his latest album devoted to Falla with the works El retablo de Maese Pedro and Amor Brujo.

This Naxos album is composed of two masterpieces by Manuel de Falla: El amor brujo, in the original version of 1915, and El retablo de Maese Pedro. Performers: Esperanza Fernández, cantaora; Alfredo García, baritone; Jennifer Zetlan, soprano; Jorge Garza, tenor; Perspectives Ensemble; Sato Moughalian, artistic director; Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director.

Music in Paradise looks at the influence of Balinese and Javanese gamelan music on Western composers. Enjoy excerpts from a concert given by PostClassical at the National Cathedral in a program including works by Colin McPhee and Lou Harrison. Gamelan and Harrison scholar Bill Alves will join the series’ regular co-hosts – Angel Gil-Ordóñez, PostClassical Music Director; ensemble co-founder and music historian Joseph Horowitz; and Bill McGlaughin, host of Exploring Music.

Mirador Cultural TV interviews the internationally renowned Spanish-American conductor Ángel Gil-Ordoñez, as part of the Christmas Gala concert that the Orchestra and choirs of the Trinitate Philarmonia offered to the Leonese audience at the Renacimiento Auditorium on Wednesday, December 19, 2018.

My professional work as a conductor has been always accompanied with a dedication to young musicians. In this video I present some thoughts about the importance of music education for the youngest, for the underprivileged, and for those whose future professional life won’t be related to artistic activities.

A group of Cuban musicians is set to join students from Georgetown University for a first-of-its-kind orchestra performance. News4’s David Culver reports how the concert is meant to bridge the longheld divide between two nations. Music for US-Cuban Relations is an International Cultural Exchange Project created by Angel Gil-Ordóñez between the students and faculty of Georgetown University and members of Lyceum Mozartiano de La Habana, which consists of travel between the two countries and joint musical presentations in Havana, Cuba. The first edition of the program took place in March of 2017 and in Washington, D.C. in April of 2017.