- Lovers of film music will be able to enjoy an extensive programme of concerts and parallel activities.
- The Teatro Leal de La Laguna will offer today, Friday the 17th, the opening gala concert ‘Electric Arcade – A VGM History’, conducted by international star Eímear Noone.
- Auditorio de Tenerife will hold two performances of ‘Once Upon Ennio Morricone: A Tribute to His Film Music’, in homage to the Oscar-winning Italian composer.
- Music and film critic Miguel Ángel Ordóñez will receive the FIMUCITÉ - Antón García Abril Award in recognition of his career.
- Teatro Guimerá in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Exconvento de Santo Domingo, in La Laguna, as well as Espacio Cultural La Granja, in Santa Cruz, Teatro Guiniguada, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Casa de los Coroneles, in La Oliva, Fuerteventura, complete the map of venues for this 15th edition.
El Cabildo de Tenerife sets the stage for the presentation press conference for the 15th Festival Internacional de Música de Cine de Tenerife (FIMUCITÉ), a point of reference in its field, which will take place as of this Friday until Sunday, the 26th of September, under the direction of renowned composer and conductor Diego Navarro and with the support of Cabildo de Tenerife, Gobierno de Canarias, Ayuntamiento de San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Ayuntamiento de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Auditorio de Tenerife and Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife.
The highlights of this anniversary edition are tributes to Italian composer Ennio Morricone and Spanish composer Antón García Abril, great Maestros of film music, who passed away mid-2020 and in March this year, respectively. The musical programme kicks off this Friday with a themed concert devoted to videogame music, and is completed with a new show by Pop Culture Band, two performances by the Coro de Voces Blancas del Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Santa Cruz de Tenerife with the Coro Polifónico de la Universidad de la Laguna and two concerts by Sinfónica de Tenerife.
CONCERT PROGRAMME
FIMUCITÉ is celebrating its 15th anniversary by offering a varied catalogue of concerts, starting at the emblematic Teatro Leal de La Laguna with ‘Electric Arcade – A VGM History’, an original programme devoted to music composed for videogames, for which we will welcome renowned Irish composer and orchestral conductor Eímear Noone at the helm.
The repertoire will include scores from classics such as ‘Tetris’ or ‘Castlevania’ and hits such as ‘Halo’, ‘Fortnite’ or ‘Zelda’, all arranged by prolific musical producer and Emmy-nominated composer Craig Stuart Garfinkle. We will also hear music from other best-selling games, such as ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or ‘Metal Gear Solid’.
Eímear Noone, who returns to FIMUCITÉ after participating in the 2017 edition with her concert ‘Espada y Brujería: Crónicas Sinfónicas de una Era Legendaria’ leading Sinfónica de Tenerife, will reveal her spectacular mise en scene and conduct a chamber orchestra with its own rock combo: the Tenerife Film Ensemble. Noone lives in Malibu, California, where she divides her time between conducting concerts and composing music for film, TV, advertising and videogames, with credits such as ‘World of Warcraft’ and its award-winning expansion, ‘Warlords of Draenor’. Also, in 2020 she became the first women to conduct the orchestra at the Academy Awards ceremony.
The Pop Culture Band presents… ‘Route 66’
This Saturday, the 18th of September, the Pop Culture Band presents, in Teatro Guimerá de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, its new show ‘Route 66’, a tribute to one of the most important and timeless movie genres, the “road movie”, where the plot develops during a road trip. The Festival´s resident band has prepared a repertoire that includes songs from artists such as Elton John, Steppenwolf, Charlie Sexton, Nancy Sinatra or Jorge Drexler, and their songs respectively featured in ‘Almost Famous’, ‘Easy Rider’, ‘Thelma & Louise’, ‘The Mexican’ or ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’.
Gonzalo de Araoz, musical director and guitarist, accompanied by the musicians of the Pop Culture Band: Francis Díaz on electric guitar, Javier Guerrero on drums, David González on keyboards, Nuria Herrero on percussion, Daniel Lukacs on bass, Elio Bignote on trumpet, Luis Cuan on sax, Cristo Delgado on trombone and with the excellent soloist vocalists Héctor Quintero, Zuleyma Medina, Patricio González, Barbara Soltesova and Adrián Lugo, will fill Teatro Guimerá to the brim with the best music to have accompanied iconic characters on the big screen on a journey, or escape, sharing intense stories, filled with emotion.
Las chicas del coro
On Sunday, the 19th of September, the Exconvento de Santo Domingo de La Laguna will hold the concert ‘Las chicas del coro’, with the participation of the Coro de Voces Blancas del Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Tenerife, an extraordinary group of ladies ages between 15 and 23, led by Juan Ramón Vinagre. Titles such as ‘Life is Beautiful’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Frozen’, ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘La La Land’ or ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ will make up part of the varied selection of scores, with exclusive choral arrangements created for the concert, which will kick off with the music of European compsers such as Nicola Piovani, Diego Navarro, Bruno Coulais or Michel Legrand.
This same concert will be performed on the 26th of September in La Granja de Santa Cruz de Tenerife. This second performance will be inclusive and friendly towards people with disabilities or who are dependent on care, thanks to the collaboration of associations Apanate and Acufade.
Tribute to Antón García Abril
On Thursday, the 23rd of September, La Laguna will hold on its stage the tribute concert to Antón García Abril, one of the greatest musical creators of the 20th Century in Spain, and an important part of FIMUCITÉ since its inception. The Festival´s Honorary Award, presented to fundamental figures in film music at an international level, carries his name, and the man himself received the award in 2014, in recognition of his scores for emblematic Spanish films such as ‘Sor Citroen’ or ‘El crimen de Cuenca’, as well as series such as ‘Fortunata y Jacinta’, ‘Ramón y Cajal’, ‘Anillos de Oro’ or ‘El Hombre y la Tierra’, by Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente.
This will be a one-off concert, performed by the Coro Polifónico de la Universidad de La Laguna under the direction of Julio Chinea Pedraza, where we will hear, as a World Premiere and for the first time ever offscreen, an extraordinary selection of his most iconic scores, thanks to composer, arranger and orchestrator Jorge Magaz, with the collaboration of Miguel Ángel Órdoñez and Julio Chinea. The concert will also feature Satomi Morimoto (piano), Emiko Morimoto (piano) and Samuel Delgado (guitarra).
‘Once Upon Ennio Morricone: A Tribute to His Film Music’
The piece de resistence of this anniversary edition will arrive on the 24th and 25th of September with the premiere of ‘Once Upon Ennio Morricone: A Tribute to His Film Music’ in the Auditorio de Tenerife. The director of FIMUCITÉ, Diego Navarro, will conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife at both programmed concerts to pay tribute to Ennio Morricone, composer of over 500 film scores and, after 5 previous nominations, recipient of the Academy Award for Best Score for his original music for 'The Hateful Eight' (2016), by Quentin Tarantino.
FIMUCITÉ, in coproduction with the European Film Philharmonic Institute, has prepared an extraordinary musical production to remind the audience of key moments in Morricone´s filmography, and take us on an emotional journey through the legacy of the legendary composer of unforgettable film scores such as ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’, ‘Cinema Paradiso’, ‘The Untouchables’, ‘The Mission’ or ‘Novecento’.
The Sinfónica de Tenerife will be accompanied onstage by the Tenerife Film Choir, led by Juan Ramón Vinagre, saxophonist Kike Perdomo, Gonzalo de Araoz (guitars) and prestigious soprano Carmen Acosta.
Both performances will feature the same Morricone repertoire, although on Friday, the 24th of September, the audience will also be able to enjoy the performance of the winning scores at the 4th Spanish Audiovisual Music Awards awarded by the Asociación de Compositores de Música para Audiovisual (Musimagen). FIMUCITÉ, for the fourth year running, will hold the ceremony for these awards, which go this year to Koldo Uriarte and Bingen Mendizábal, in the category of Best Original Orchestral Score, as composer of the soundtrack to the film ‘Baby’, by Juanma Bajo Ulloa. Also, the award for Best Electroacoustic Score goes to Darío Palomo, for his work on documentary ‘Emilio Herrera’. The award for Best Original Series Score goes to Sergio Jiménez Lacima, for ‘El Desafío: ETA’, and, finally, the award for Best Original Music in Advertising goes to Daniel Trujillo, for ‘Allianz’.
FIMUCITÉ – Antón García Abril Award for Miguel Ángel Ordóñez
Music and film critic Miguel Ángel Ordóñez, director and founder, in 2005, of specialist soundtrack website Scoremagacine.com, will receive the FIMUCITÉ – Antón García Abril 2021 Award in recognition of his career.
Miguel Ángel collaborated between 2012 and 2017 with the Academia del Cine Español magazine and has been the editor for the soundtrack section of the most important Spanish-language classical music magazine in the world, Scherzo, since 2017. In 2018, Miguel Ángel Ordóñez produced, for label Quartet Records, a published edition of the soundtrack for legendary Spanish television series ‘El Hombre y la Tierra’, composed by Antón García Abril.
Miguel Ángel Ordóñez is a peerless expert in his field, and, for this edition of FIMUCITÉ, has collaborated as an advisor and in the selection for the choral concert dedicated to García Abril.
PARALLEL ACTIVITIES
The programme of parallel activities for the 15th edition of FIMUCITÉ includes screenings of both short films and feature films, fictional and documentary, both in our Official Competition section FIMUCINEMA and in our new season with Filmoteca Canaria, which, on this occasion, is devoted to great composers of scores for Spaghetti Westerns. Also, the Fimucité Film Scoring Academy will reopen its doors with a specialist training offer.
FIMUCINEMA
From the 20th to the 26th of September, Espacio Cultural La Granja, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will hold the screenings that make up the FIMUCINEMA Competition section, coordinated by Manuel Díaz Noda. A selection of 4 fiction feature films, 5 documentaries and 19 shorts will compete this year in the four established categories: Alex North Award for Best Original Score for Fictional Feature, Fimucinema Award for Best Original Score for Documentary, Fimucinema Award for Best Original Score for Short Film and Fimucinema Award for Best Original Song.
The selection of screenings cover appealing and exotic works from places such as Estonia (‘Virago’) or Puerto Rico (‘La Última Gira’), but also from EU countries such as Italy (‘Come Niente’), France (‘Navozande, The Musician’), Belgium (‘Mosaic’) or Germany (‘Jim Button and the Wild 13’).
FIMUCITÉ Film Scoring Academy
The Fimucité Film Scoring Academy, coordinated by Pedro J. Mérida, will celebrate its 6th edition in the Sala de Cámara at Teatro Leal de La Laguna, on the 20th, 24th and 25th of September, with the participaction of speakers Eímear Noone, our guest conductor, renowned Spanish composers Darío Palomo, Xavier Capellas and Daniel Trujillo and film music expert Conrado Xalabarder.
This is one of the most eagerly-awaited parallel activities of the Festival, which offers a yearly programme of masterclasses for students and professional musicians interested in the creation of audiovisual music as a professional alternative.
‘The Sound of the Spaghetti Western’ Season
The Spaghetti western film subgenre, which shone brightest in the 1960s and 70s, and their soundtracks will also take centre stage in a screening season which is part of the parallel activity programme of this 15th edition of FIMUCITÉ, thanks to the collaboration of Filmoteca Canaria.
Under the banner ‘The Sound of the Spaghetti Western’, we will emphasis the importance of creators such as Oscar winner Ennio Morricone, Luis Bacalov, Nora Orlandi, brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis or Spanish composor Antón García Abril, who developed a new musical language which revolutionsed the world of music written for film, with the inclusion of sounds previously unheard in this context, such as whistles, gunshots or the peeling of bells.
The programme kicked off this week with 'The Return of Ringo', by Duccio Tessari, in the Teatro Guiniguada in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. However, screenings will also be available to enjoy throughout September and October at Espacio Cultural La Granja, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Casa de los Coroneles, in La Oliva, Fuerteventura.
The season offers the chance to discover, or revisit, classics 'Texas, Adios', 'Death at Owell Rock', 'Keoma' and 'Django'.
Collaboration Agreement with Radiotelevisión Canaria
In this anniversary edition, FIMUCITÉ will once again count on the collaboration of Radiotelevisión Canaria in their position as a public service with the aim of fulfilling the fundamental rights of the Canarian society to information and facilitating access to and promotion of culture and education.
To this end, the autonomous radio and television network will not only offer special news coverage of the Festival´s programme, but will also record the concert ‘Once Upon Ennio Morricone: A Tribute to His Film Music’ for subsequent broadcast.
The Closing Gala Event of the Festival will take place on Sunday, the 26th of September, at Espacio Cultural La Granja with announcement of the FIMUCINEMA award winners and the prizegiving ceremony.
The Festival Internacional de Música de Cine de Tenerife, directed by renowned composor and orchestra conductor Diego Navarro, celebrates this special 15th Anniversary edition with the support of Cabildo de Tenerife, Gobierno de Canarias, Ayuntamiento de San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Ayuntamiento de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Auditorio de Tenerife and Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, as well as Fundación “la Caixa”, Fundación Disa, Fundación SGAE and Radiotelevisión Canaria.