Honduras concert serves as prelude to launch of Mesoamerican Women’s Orchestra
Tegucigalpa, Jun 15 (EFE).- A concert this week in Honduras’ capital featuring artists from that Central American country served as a prelude to what will be the Mesoamerican Women’s Orchestra (OMM), which will perform for the first time later this year.
Wednesday’s event at the Manuel Bonilla National Theater in Tegucigalpa was presided over by the head of the Office of Culture, Arts and Heritage of the Peoples of Honduras, Anarella Velez, and included the participation of around 100 Honduran musicians and singers.
Once it is formally launched in October, the OMM will comprise 150 musicians and singers from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama, as well as the Dominican Republic as special guest.
Velez said the idea for that orchestra stems from an initiative carried out by Mexican arts promoter Julio Solorzano Foppa, who in 2015 founded a female youth orchestra in Guatemala in honor of his mother, Alaide Foppa, an educator and poet who disappeared in 1980 amid that country’s long civil war.
Solorzano Foppa, who now is the coordinator of the OMM project, also lost two brothers during that same internal conflict.
The OMM will first perform on Oct. 8 at the Manuel Bonilla National Theater before an audience that will include as special guest Honduran President Xiomara Castro, Velez said, adding that the head of state offered her administration’s full support after learning about the initiative.
She said efforts also are under way to enlist support for the orchestra project from the Tegucigalpa-based Central American Bank for Economic Integration.
“We want to bring about the unity of Central America through the art of music, through culture, because it’s worth doing so,” the senior Honduran government official said.
Solorzano Foppa, who in 2015 also created a youth orchestra in Mexico made up of 450 boys and girls, said that after its debut in Honduras the OMM will embark on a short concert tour that will take it to the capitals of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico.
That orchestra will then give two performances at the Palacio de Bellas Artes cultural center in Mexico City on Oct. 21.
Due to the high cost of maintaining a permanent orchestra, Solorzano Foppa said the initial plan is for its performances to take place just one month out of the year, starting in October in Honduras.
The 100 Honduran artists who took part in Wednesday’s concert before a packed audience are residents of the cities of San Pedro Sula, Santa Barbara and Tegucigalpa, the director of the National Music Conservatory, Any Matamoros, told Efe.
Matamoros and Angie Licona served as conductors for the concert, whose first part featured pieces from across Central America and then concluded with a selection of works by Honduran composers. EFE
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