Press

During the shutdown, PostClassical Ensemble has been sharing archived videos of their performances, followed up with Zoom chats bringing listeners and artists together. Although Gil-Ordóñez was initially skeptical about Zoom chats, he sees now that it is a powerful way to enhance the relationship with the ensemble’s audience. “We are putting faces on those who have followed us for years,” he enthused. “We can see them, and we are giving them a platform to participate more in the discussions. So this is a very positive part of having no live music: we are getting to know our audiences better. We are planning on continuing this as a complement to everything we have done before. To me this is the most important lesson of this time.”

He is an angel. In fact, that’s his first name and his passport ends with the last names Gil-Ordóñez. Perhaps it is more appropiate to portray him as an archangel for the immense work he has done in favor of music –real music– not only in his commendable career as a teacher at Wesleyan university and Georgetown, but in the invaluable work leading Post-Classical Ensemble, hand in hand with the genius of Joseph Horowitz.

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.

Though he is probably the best-known Spanish composer, in this country Manuel de Falla isn’t a marquee name. Many of his compositions are piano pieces, chamber music works or zarzuelas — light operas rarely presented here […] PostClassical Ensemble’s two dozen expert players followed Gil-Ordóñez’s every move, giving a flawless, thoroughly nuanced performance.

A play on the relationship between the composer and the poet and a recreation by director Ángel Gil-Ordóñez of El retablo de Maese Pedro commemorate in the U.S. capital the centenary of the musical piece inspired by Don Quixote.

Wednesday night, I was at the John F. Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater to review the debut presentation of a wildly bold experiment headed up by the eclectic and accomplished PostClassical Ensemble in an orchestral program, Entwined: A Double Feature. […] As an audience member, you could enter this evening’s alchemic collaboration through any of the parts represented, but, taken as a whole, it proved a dazzling feast.

One of the most unique […] evenings of the year was the PostClassical Ensemble’s “A Wicked New Look,” which presented a captivating concert at the Kennedy Center of miniaturized Mahler favorites custom-cut to accommodate the lowing, glowing bass trombone of classical experimentalist David Taylor. Under conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez, the ensemble wryly turned the composer’s natural and psychological landscapes inside out, with Taylor’s trombone lending the music something between sonic slapstick and brute pathos.

My regular readers know that I generally avoid “classic film scores” like the plague, only making exceptions for the truly exceptional ones, whether classical or jazz. I made an exception for this disc because Silvestre Revueltas, whose name is unfortunately not as well known north of Mexico as it should be, and Aaron Copland were two of the finest composers of their time.

The vital and immensely colorful, very narrative music [of Redes] is superbly played under the direction of Angel Gil-Ordonez. […] Copland’s score is highly atmospheric and supports the expressiveness of the images with no less expressive, quasi-argumentative music. The result is a wonderful, highly original score with a lasting effect, which can be heard on this CD in a very haunting interpretation. Listened to without the movie pictures, it becomes, like the music of Revueltas, a magnificent tone poem.

Herrmann composed some of the best-known film music ever written — especially the scores he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock. Now a new CD shows another side of Herrmann that’s equally memorable […] The variety of music on this CD –colorful, romantic, witty, patriotic, nerve-wracking– shows how much Bernard Herrmann’s concert and radio music equaled the astonishing range of his work for film.

Each new album by PostClasical Ensemble and its director, Ángel Gil-Ordóñez, is both a surprise and a discovery. The deserved result of investigating beyond the predictable. And this new album of his is not an exception in his line, but the joyous confirmation of it.

Maestro Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Spanish-born American conductor, founder of the PostClassical Ensemble — and our February cover model — spoke with The Georgetowner about his passion for music, what he loves about the D.C. arts scene and his upcoming projects.

PostClassical Ensemble, la plataforma musical creada por el director de orquesta español afincado en Washington y el musicólogo Joseph Horowitz, lleva dos décadas reinventando la música clásica en Estados Unidos.

[…] His latest album on the Naxos label is dedicated to composer Bernard Herrmann, author of the soundtracks for some of Hitchcock’s most famous films. The record offers the absolute first recording of Whitman, a radio drama whose music Herrmann composed in 1944 on texts of the great American poet.

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

The world of work has inspired some of our best-known classical music. From Schumann to Shostakovich, to one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century: Aaron Copland. For Labor Day, Copland is our focus.

We spoke with Ángel Gil-Ordoñez who presents a new album, recorded with PostClassical Ensemble, with works by Bernard Herrmann.

Ricardo de Cala from Radio Nacional de España’s radio program Maestros cantores asks Angel Gil-Ordóñez about his new projects.

Angel Gil-Ordóñez, the musical director of PostClassical Ensemble, tells us about the new recording of works by the North American composer Bernard Herrmann.

The Chairman Mixes is a series of chats with cocktail pairings. In this first episode, Ángel Gil-Ordóñez, PostClassical Ensemble’s conductor and music director, joins Douglas Rathbun, PCE’s board chair, looking into the conductor as a profession. The discussion is paired with the 1888 recipe of the classic Martini cocktail.

Un café con… is a series of virtual talks with the Ambassador of Spain, Santiago Cabanas, and Spanish influencers living in the U.S. Organized by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain and hosted by the Ambassador, during 30 minutes you will have the opportunity to get to know these special guests better.

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.