This is the full story of this musical
collaboration. Caracas Sincrónica has
performed several times at the Bolívar
Hall in London and other venues in
England. Here this group's voracious
curiosity for new sounds became
particularly restless, a mood that was
crying for collaboration with British
musicians. At the embassy, we suggested
to them that the British Council Venezuela
might respond to such an urge, and they
did. In 2002, Tim Williams, the artistic
director of the group Psappha, made an
exploratory visit to Venezuela and began
exchanging musical experiences with
Caracas Sincrónica. These were later to
become the core of the programme
presented at the Ateneo de Caracas on
November 7th 2004: 18 songs, five by the
Venezuelan group, three by Psappha and
10 were arrangements of both
Venezuelan and British authors performed
by the two groups as one integrated
ensemble. Their styles are very different
and much creative effort went into fusing
them but it paid off as the result enthused
the Venezuelan audience and press, and
obviously the British Council Venezuela as
well, as it has now undertaken with great
energy and generosity, the second leg of
the collaboration: a tour in England which
ends with a circular flourish at the Bolívar
Hall. We give them the warmest welcome.
CARACAS SINCRÓNICA
Here’s a new and exciting musical sound
from Latin America to brighten and heat
up a winter evening. Raúl Abzueta, Pedro
Marín and Alessandro García founded
Caracas Sincrónica in 1996 as a trio of
guitar, mandolin and clarinet, and in 2002,
the percussionist Rolando Canónico
joined them. This atypical group brings up
a new proposal which roots from
traditional Venezuelan music, influenced
by jazz harmonies and classical music
counterpoint giving way to a universal
search from a particular sonority. The
group also produces original music and
commissions works from contemporary
Venezuelan composers. The access to
technology and information allows them to
create something unique and,
nonetheless, traditional.
Caracas Sincrónica substitutes the
rhythmic and harmonic sound of the fourstringed
cuatro for the guitar, and
reintroduces the clarinet, formerly used by
El Cuarteto Caraquita. The rhythmic
element, which demanded a special
approach in absence of the bass, was
reinforced with the introduction of
Canónico's percussion.
PSAPPHA
The leading new music and music-theatre
ensemble in the North of England,
Psappha was formed in 1991 by its Artistic
Director, Tim Williams, and has built up a
repertoire of over 300 works and a
reputation for outstanding technical and
interpretational ability. As well as
performances in Psappha’s home city of
Manchester the ensemble performs
throughout the UK at leading music
festivals, notably BBC Proms, Aldeburgh,
Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Bath, Buxton,
Oxford, St. Magnus Festival in Orkney
and the Henze Festival and Maxwell
Davies Festivals at the Queen Elizabeth
Hall. Psappha also gave the first-ever
public performance at Stormont Castle in
Belfast. They have toured to Australia,
North and South America, France,
Belgium, Ireland, Holland, Spain and
Portugal. Psappha established its own
recording label in 2004 with unconducted
performances of Maxwell Davies’s Eight
Songs for a Mad King and Miss
Donnithorne’s Maggot, the ensemble will
release the first recording of Maxwell
Davies’s final opera Mr Emmet Takes a
Walk in spring 2006.
