Archive for category: Philarmed News

The confinement measures made us take refuge at home for a year and a half and made it impossible for human beings to enjoy the outside world, except for some animals that went out to occupy the streets in search of food, others to enjoy the low pollution. After completing the quarantine and endless hours of recording to broadcast virtual concerts, the oboist Cristian Cardenas He felt the need to do something beyond music, he wanted to walk—an everyday activity that we were deprived of during the pandemic. For him, walking, in addition to its benefits for physical health, helps reflect and mental well-being.

He still remembers the steps he took in the countryside to get to his school, because he studied in a rural school, and the endless hours walking throughout Bogotá when he needed to have internal dialogues, “I think I walked through the entire city,” says Cárdenas.

The musician has been hiking for five years, it is an activity that he loves because it allows him to have a healthy relationship with the planet; but during the pandemic he had to interrupt it. Cristian is a native of Bogotá, he says he loves Medellín for the climate, for its hills and mountains, “discovering its landscapes blew my mind,” he says with emotion.

Trip

And that need to return to the outside world, two years ago, led him to have one of the best experiences of his life in La Guajira, a six-day adventure that began in the municipality of Uribia and ended in Punta Gallinas. A trip that transformed his life.

“We slept in a rancheria, there are no hotels there. There are only rancherías that provide that service, there is no internet. There is electricity because they have a generator, so they turn it on during certain hours of the day, the same with water…we slept in a hammock.”

For the oboist, the landscapes that can be seen are amazing, the intense yellow color predominates, the plains are immense and in the middle of the desert you can see the traditional Wayúu rancherías, where children take the opportunity to put up small “checkpoints” and ask for toys, cookies or sweets. to the tourists. All this natural wealth contrasts with the poverty experienced there, between the lack of drinking water, extractivism, wind farms and the humanitarian crisis. The Wayúu survive dispossession and food insecurity; hunger strikes them.

The Wayúu* people have struggled with the natural adversities of the Guajira region, a land of sun, sand and wind, in addition to facing discrimination, racism, marginalization and violence by some non-indigenous inhabitants of the region. The DANE Census reported approximately 270,413 people who recognize themselves as belonging to the Wayúu people, a figure that positions this indigenous people as the largest in the country.

“It was a seven-hour journey in the desert, all the time children stopped us to ask for food. It shocked me a lot because we were going for a walk, but we found a very harsh reality even though the landscapes were beautiful; It was something very strong. I feel that the true value of that walk was the spirit of solidarity that was awakened in me. I saw how the children even fought over food and toys. I feel that we are obliged to establish a policy of solidarity with others that helps improve the quality of life of these inhabitants, since they are people who are abandoned and my duty as a citizen is not to be oblivious to that reality. I think that after music, my mission in life is to help those most in need.”

And it was this experience during this trip that planted a feeling of solidarity in Cristian Cárdenas, a virtue that will motivate him to continue walking through the country to get to know its landscapes and be in solidarity with the communities that inhabit them. He is already preparing to tour the Pacific and the Amazon, he says: “solidarity is key to supporting the most vulnerable in our country to have a better life.”

Music

Cristian Cárdenas has been an oboe player with the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra since 2018. He is part of a musical family from Pasca, Cundinamarca. He has two siblings, Valentina, a violinist, and Julián, a harpist, who currently live, study and work in Spain and China, respectively; and with whom in 2010 he had the opportunity to share the same stage with the Batuta Orchestra of Bogotá. “Since then I never met them again, it would be very exciting to share music in concert again,” says the oboist, a graduate of the National University of Colombia, with two master's degrees in interpretation and orchestra from the Musikschule Trossingen, Germany.

“Composers use the oboe and the English horn in very special moments of the works, many times they are the most melancholic and beautiful in music where these instruments have a great solo. Our job is to move the public.”

* Also known as Guajiro, Wayu, Uáira, Waiu. The word Wayúu is a self-designation used by indigenous people and translates “person” in general, indigenous of one's own ethnic group, ally and also, the partner (husband or wife).

There is a township southwest of Medellín that is named after a saint and even houses a 129-year-old church. There in San Antonio de Prado—with narrow streets and muleteers who transport tobacco, wood and liquor—there is a village where Virginia Saldarriaga, born in 1962, lives.

In her house there is a garden where she plants marjoram, rosemary, arnica and joy; On the sidewalk they say that they are their friends and nurses because they cure even lovesickness. Essences, candles and other concoctions are painstakingly prepared there. And he is so devoted to his plants that he asks their permission to even steal a piece of them.

One day Virginia realized that some plants were not growing and others were growing with their heads down.

—Surely it's that witch! “The one who dances at midnight in the garden and makes my plants die of fear,” exclaimed Virginia to her daughter Jenny Saldarriaga, director of the Medellín Music Network.

He says that when the witch approached the garden the plants suffered a lot since they knew that she would step on them and mistreat them. Virginia, still grieving and sad, decided to bring her plants back to life by singing and playing tiple and lyre, two instruments that she loved to play at the age of five with her father in Cartago, a municipality in Valle del Cauca.

One night Virginia mistakenly drank a potion of aguapanela that the witch had left on the table. She immediately fell into a deep sleep that enveloped her in a terrifying darkness, from which she seemed to never wake up. She felt so weak and plagued by strange hallucinations that she lost all hope.

In the midst of his anguish he began to look back on his life in music and the joys it had given him. Singing Christmas carols at her first communion mass, participating in the Cartago children's choir, founding the Cantos de Antioquia choir and remembering seeing her daughter graduate from the EAFIT music faculty thanks to a scholarship, were memories that motivated her to wake up that deep dream and thinking that through singing she could save her life and even give life to others. After this rebirth, the witch was never seen on the sidewalk again and all her plants grew fresh, green, full of energy.

The story is inspired by the life of Virginia Saldarriaga who is a peace activist and has been a member of the Reconciliation Choir since 2022. She is passionate about sowing and singing, and her entire life was dedicated to music until a diagnosis of cancer, which kept her in death. clinic for fifteen days, they made her forget about her love for singing. After that particular episode, he says he was filled with courage to be reborn as plants do and reaffirmed his mission in life: to heal the soul through music and heal the body through planting.

“For me, the Reconciliation Choir means rebirth, healing through singing, and the most wonderful thing is finding people who are looking for the same thing. What I like most is seeing the harmony of all my classmates in rehearsals and singing one of my favorite songs, Nothing for War.”

With different instruments, but united by the same dream, music has touched the lives of Mariana and Miguel Ángel, members of the Urabá Children's and Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. A group that began as a dream and that has come to fruition thanks to the talent of its 62 students. In 2022, the orchestra performed fourteen presentations accompanying events in the region and twenty ensemble meetings.

This mission of bringing music to all the people of the region is what has motivated the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra to deliver a life full of hope to children and young people in Urabá, Antioquia.

Sow music with love

Mariana Ayala, she is 14 years old, she is the principal second violin of the orchestra. Her voice expresses deep love for the violin more than anything else in life, she even longs in the future to be a professional musician and perhaps play as a soloist in orchestras around the world. But before realizing his dream, he knows that he must finish school and graduate. Mariana says that her favorite subjects are artistic and livestock and agricultural, the latter because she has had the opportunity to plant plantains and bananas, and explore the types of livestock, which are necessary tools for life and work in the countryside.

The student alternates her school classes with music rehearsals, because both are important in her life, she says; He practices his instrument for an hour a day, with the same discipline with which he frequently sings in his neighborhood church. “I like the way the violin sounds, it gives me peace of mind. With it I can express feelings like affection, love, even sadness. When I have had the opportunity to be a soloist I get very nervous, but it makes me happy to know that the public can feel and hear life through my instrument.” Although he likes to look through books, he prefers to read his scores and his love for music came when he was 8 years old, when a teacher visited his school and invited several students to take free music classes. “There I learned recorder, xylophone, metallophone and even staff. I also had the opportunity to practice French horn and trumpet, but all my attention and heart was on the violin.”

Mariana, born in Chigorodó, was embraced by music before she was born because Mercedes, her mother, stimulated her with romantic songs and universal classics.

Chigorodó, located in the Urabá subregion, means “Guaduas River” in the Katía language. It is a hot municipality, but with large cool rivers. Next to it rises the Serranía de Abibe, a large water reserve in the Uraba subregion.

An instrument that shines like the sun

“If you ask me what my favorite toy is, I will say the trumpet, because I always have fun with it, discover, play and rehearse.” Miguel Ángel Rengifo

The first trumpet of the Urabá Symphony Orchestra is led by 14-year-old Miguel Ángel Rengifo; His life in music began in 2019 with percussion because at first there were no brass instruments; And he loves that family of instruments for their strength and sonority and even because within the orchestra it shines like the sun, he says, “if my instrument were a character it would be someone strong, elegant, beautiful, but very boisterous.” He also really likes the instrument's pistons because they fit easily over his fingers.

He considers himself a very disciplined young man and knows that he must practice the various trumpet methods for at least forty-five minutes each day. “Music is a life project. Since I was little I identified with her, I remember that at family parties we all danced to the rhythm of salsa and merengue, and we sang rancheras,” says the trumpeter.

Miguel, who was born in Apartadó, wants to be a professional musician, but also a trumpet teacher because he dreams that many young people will make music a life purpose. She is currently in ninth grade and loves Spanish, especially when she practices spelling and calligraphy. She even recently found another passion: reading. And although he doesn't like numbers, he says that his favorite book is Damned Mathematics by Carlo Frabetti. “…I like it because they explain mathematical concepts to me in an easier way, and, on the other hand, I think it's a fun story in which Alice arrives in a world of wonders that shows her the beauty of numbers.”

The Almond Tree in Blossom, an oil on canvas painted in 1890 inspired by Japanese woodcut, was one of Van Gogh's favorites and is also the favorite of Marisol López, cornist at Filarmed. And the flowering branches against a blue sky are the objects that she admires most in this work of art. Like his neighbors in the San Javier neighborhood, a group of trees—which he can see right in front of his house—visited by woodpeckers that frequently drill their stems.

The cornista deeply loves nature, because it inspires her, especially the trees, which give her shade and oxygen. She says: “I am amazed by what I see in everyday life, I like to paint landscapes, take photos of clouds, of the dogs or cats that I find in my path, of the flowers.”

Marisol is a thoughtful woman, who expresses gratitude to her family, especially her mother, because she has always supported her in her career as a musician. Passionate about her instrument, her pets and especially about photography, she dreams of having a home for animals. He began his musical life with lyrical singing, with a few semesters in high school. He then went on to study the horn professionally, because his family, classmates and professors at the University told him that this instrument suited him well and he had the talent to play it.

She participated in the orchestra in 2009, as a guest musician, with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique” and Grieg's Piano Concerto under the direction of the Russian maestro Guerassim Voronkov. In addition, he was part of other productions for large orchestra: Mahler, Strauss and Holst, “Composers who created large-format works, which require six cornists and even more in a row!”, expresses Marisol with emotion. That same year, with the Seresta philharmonic fusion concert, she debuted as a Filarmed staff musician.

The instrumentalist also loves her pets; the cat Tito and his dogs Lucas and Fruna. “I adopted Fruna in particular in Fredonia when I accompanied the orchestra on a tour of the southwest, it was love at first sight! Even my classmates encouraged me to adopt her. I received her with love and even with fear, because I didn't know how they were going to welcome her at home; “Some musicians nicknamed her the Filarmed mascot,” said the musician.

Marisol is one of the few women in Colombia who plays horn in a professional orchestra. She was assigned to it by pure coincidence when she was in the Medellín Music School Network at the age of 17. He liked it because it seemed like a strange instrument, its shape, its shine, because it was a different instrument.

“You can find music in everything, even in nature, in the singing of birds, the movement of trees, the sound of the wind, a river.”

About the instrument

The French horn or French horn is a metal wind instrument with a conical mouthpiece, very versatile, since its tessitura has a wide variety of musical notes since its cylinders allow it to produce various types of sounds that range from the lowest to the highest. .

With music life sounds BRUTAL.

It elevates, transforms and takes us to a higher state.
It is there when we need it most, no matter if we are sad or happy, there is always a perfect song for each moment.

There is music to relax, to dance until our feet hurt, to dedicate and others that make our hearts sing. There are songs to concentrate, and even to do cardio... of any kind 😏

The music is there waiting for us to play it to make us forget everything for a few minutes.

And if they ask us what music is, we may not know very well what to answer, but if they ask us what it makes us feel, we will say it by singing.

Because with Music life sounds BRUTAL.

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