Lola Lizaran fellows mourn the loss of Carles Rodríguez

Last weekend, 27th and 28th of september, 2008, the fifth edition ceremony of the Lola Lizaran awards was held in a very special circumstances. One of the fellows of the foundation, Carles Rodríguez, bassoon player, former singer of the "Escolania de Montserrat" and a contratenor promise (finalist at the cuatro TV show "Tienes talento") had passed away in a tragic accident some weeks before at the very young age of 19. All the members of the jury and the students gave him a little tribute. After the students concert his performance of "Lascia la Spina" (Händel) at TV was projected in a very emotive moment.

Rest in peace.

P.D. This year the awarded students were: Joan Jurado (piano), Paula Barnet (musical theatre), Sergi Puente (violin), Samanta Busquet (makeup, cinema and TV), Alba Hinojosa (violin), Carles Rodríguez (basoon and contratenor), Matea Bradicic (flute), Jaime Arroyo (piano), Anna Peña (violin) and Ruben León (violin).

Six Little Preludes of J.S. Bach released

The Six Little Preludes of J.S. Bach are a relatively well-known work of the baroque composer. Almost all piano students have played some of theses little preludes during their learning process.
Jaime Arroyo has been working on these six pieces the last spring of 2008. His motivation was pedagogical at first, when one of his piano students was playing some of them. However, he realised that the qualilty of the work is not perceived enough at the early age when it use to be studied. For this reason, Jaime decided to deal with the whole work and recorded it. The result is published in Youtube and here you have the complete list of links.
BWV: 933,934,935,936,937,938

And the 935 in D minor as example:

Mozart Mass Brevis in C K. 220 at Esparreguera

On Sunday 13th, July 2008, during the Local festival of Esparreguera, Jaime Arroyo sang as Baritone soloist at the Church of this town where was performed the Mozart's Mass Brevis K. 220 "Sparrow Mass". The choir was formed by the coral of the music school, directed by Olga Aurin, and the chant students of the music school, directed by Alicia Prieto. The orchestra combined students, former students and teachers. The conductor was Manel Ribera and the concertino was the violinist Sergi Puente (ESMUC student, JONC member, and Lola Lizaran fellow). The other soloist were: Natalia Ordóñez, Alba Comellas, Francisco de Borja Martínez and Dani Casas. The concert was really successful and the church was plemty of people.


Reports of the event can be found here:

- Esparreguera ciutat del meu cor
- CIU en xarxa

Chamber Music Marathon at ESMuC

The last Saturday 15th of december, 2007,at 16:00h Jaime Arroyo and Lucas Peire played a Polka for two pianos of Lennox Berkeley at the orquestra classroom of the ESMuC.

The performance belonged to a chamber music Marathon celebrated between the 14th and the 16th of december at the Orquestra classroom, the Choir classroom and the Tete Montoliu Hall of the Auditori. In the same concert were played other pieces for two pianos like capriccio, "d'après le bal masqué" of F. Poulenc ( Marco Gonzalvo and Santiago Meijide), Larghetto and allegro in E of W.A Mozart (Ferran Barrios and Lázaro Castillo) and a concert in C BWV 1061 of J.S. Bach (Imma Gil and Pablo Torres). After this, at 17:00 the Leonid Sintsev pupils (Enrique Lapaz, Toni Costa, Pau Baiges and Santiago Blanco) played the five concerts for piano of Beethoven in a very wonderful concert. The audience were impressed by the virtuosim and force of all the interpretations.



Jaime Arroyo (right) and Lucas Peire (left) playing the polka of Berkeley at the Orquestra Classroom of the ESMuC, l'Auditori.

Hand program can be found here.

Practicum at Music Technology Group

On summer 2007, Jaime Arroyo worked in his Practicum at the Music Technology Group (MTG) of the University Pompeu Fabra. The research, in the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), consisted in the comparison of two algorithms of automatic classification of musical genre. Both were implemented in MATLAB and the results were examinated. Statistical processing tecniques such as Gaussian Mixture Models or Hidden Markov Models were used and studied. The whole work was conducted by Enric Guaus, researcher at the MTG and teacher of the Sonology department at the ESMUC.

• report (PDF, english)

Scholarship holder of Lola Lizarán foundation

The last Saturday 22th of September, 2007, at 22:00h Jaime Arroyo and other ten students were awarded by the Lola Lizarán foundation in a ceremony celebrated in the "Patronat Parroquial" of Esparreguera. This foundation awards every year (it was the fourth edition) different students neighbors of Esparreguera or old students of the Music School of Esparreguera with amounts between 1000€ and 1500€ to perform superior studies of music or drama. After the ceremony all the scholarship holders did a concert for the people who had gone to the act. The concert was repeated on Sunday afternoon.

Jaime Arroyo played the prelude op.23 nº4 in D and the etude op.39 nº5 in Eb minor, both of S.Rachmaninoff. He also accompanied the violinists Anna Peña that play the Kreisler's Liebeslied, and Sergi Puente that played two sonnets of Eduard Toldrà: "La font" and "Oració al Maig".

Lluis Grané at the Palau

Yesterday 22nd of february I went to the concert of Lluis Grané at the Palau de la Música (Barcelona). The concert went in crescendo all the time. The first part was a little boring because he played six pieces of Albéniz that in some times resulted so long and coldish. The second part began with the fugitives visions of Prokofiev and finished with his 7th sonate, this one was the most successfull. However, the "extras" were much better, and the public answered with power. Some "bravos" were listened and the young pianist (20 years old) left the concert hall with a visible smile in his mouth. In my opinion, Lluis Grané, passed his Palau's debut very successfully. Good luck for him.

Great Show! L'Elisir d'Amore Review

Both representations were successfully. The plenty theater, filled by people of all ages, were actually surprised of the quality of the actuation and enjoied it with extremely attention.

"About one thousand, eight hundred people applause 'Elisir d'Amore' at Esparreguera" says in its cover the regional newspaper "Regió 7". You can see the scanned picture below:

In its page 6, we find and entire report of the acts:

L'Elisir D'amore

On Saturday 2nd at 22.00h and on Sunday at 18.00h 3rd of December, 2006, Jaime Arroyo will act as Sergeant Belcore in the 2 acts Opera of G.Donizetti: L'Elisir d'Amore with libretto of Felice Romani at the theater "La Passió" in Esparreguera.

The other soloists will be:
Carles Prats (1st act) & Miquel Humbert (2nd act) as Nemorino (in substitution of Pep Torras)
Ingrid Ustrell as Adina
Dani Casas as Dulcamara
Mercè Guarro as Gianetta


The Choir is fed by disciples of Alicia Prieto, teachers of the Music School of Esparreguera and some neighbors of the town.

All the Opera will be accompained by the JOSA (Young Simphonic Orchestra of Anoia) conducted by David Riba

The entrance will cost 12€
More information: http://www.periodistes.org/cat/home/elissir_d_amore.pdf

This event on Internet (online newspapers):

Cancionero.com

Operaactual.com

Vilaweb collbató

Cartellera Teatre "La passió"

Cartellera Ajuntament Esparreguera

Serveis Educatius Baix Llobregat

La Serva Padrona

On Friday 20th and on Sunday 22nd of May, 2005, Jaime Arroyo performed the opera buffa "La Serva Padrona" of G.B.Pergolesi (1710-1736) as Umberto. Serpina was interpretated by the soprano Berta Benedicto, at the moment student of the CMMB. The actors Milena Caliz, as narrator, and Roger Xaus, as the dumb Vespone, contributed to a beautiful actuation. All the opera was accompained with the piano, played by Montse Giné.
Althought both representations were successfully, on Friday there were some problems with the order of one Aria that was to be repited. On Sunday all goes very well.
You can find a brief explanation of the argument here and the libretto here.

Moreover, before the Pergolesi's opera, it was interpretated "Der getreue Musikmeister" of G.P.Telemann by the bariton Dani Casas as Musikmeister and the children choir of the School of Music of Esparreguera as disciples, also accompained by Montse Giné that played the piano.

The Scene director was Carme Paltor and the technic of illumination was Enric Canela.


Jaime Arroyo (Umberto) and Berta Benedicto (Serpina) singing "La Serva Padrona" of Pergolesi in the "Casal del Bruc" at El Bruc on 22nd of may,2005.