Classical Laguna Experience 2025: Venezuela – Guest of Honor at the Canary Islands Festival

Listen up, friends! This morning at the Leal Theater in La Laguna, they announced the Classical Laguna Experience (CLE) 2025 festival. It will take place in September and October at various locations in Tenerife, La Gomera, and Lanzarote.

This festival is a unique event in Europe, bringing together the Canary Islands and Latin America. This year, Venezuela will be the guest of honor, as we share a long-standing friendship with the Canaries, especially in music. CLE is funded by Promotur (Canary Islands), the Government of the Canary Islands, the Cabildo of Tenerife, and the City Council of La Laguna.

The most interesting program will be in La Laguna. The festival will open with Camerata Lacunensis – a cool choral group, known not only in the Canary Islands but throughout the world. They perform works by Canarian and Latin American authors brilliantly, and generally raise choral music to a high level. These are exactly the kind of artists CLE wants to support.

As part of the friendship with Venezuela, the festival will feature beloved classical hits that we all remember. Singer Fabiola Socas will combine bolero, cumbia, and Canarian cultural heritage. She will sing songs about how our people once went to Venezuela, and how important that is for us today.

Another young group, Camerata Magec from Gran Canaria, will show us a fresh perspective on the music of Canarian and Latin American composers. They play music that is becoming increasingly popular in the world.

And the Classical Laguna Experience Orchestra (CLEO) concert is the main event of the festival! In 2025, they will play works by Canarian and Latin American composers, and for the first time in the world, the piece Phase by composer Irene Fariña, which was specially commissioned for the festival, will be performed. CLE always supports local authors and helps them create new music. By the way, this piece will be recorded on a disc along with La leyenda del noble caballero by Mexican composer José Elizondo.

The festival will feature cool musicians. Venezuelan Glass Marcano will be a conductor for the first time, which is great because CLE supports women in music. Her story is simply amazing: in three months, she went from selling fruit in a village to conducting an orchestra in Paris!

The orchestra will also feature Venezuelan violinist Alexis Cárdenas, one of the best musicians in Latin America, concertmaster of the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France in Paris. And they will be joined by Venezuelan Jesús "Pingüino" González, a renowned master of the Venezuelan cuatro, who now lives in the Canary Islands, and Canarian Cristián Suárez, who plays the flute.

And a little more about La Gomera and Lanzarote:

CLE has been bringing its program to different islands for several years. In La Gomera, on September 22 and 24, Alexander Álvarez with "Guitar, a Universe of Possibilities" and the Roma Duo (violin and cello) with "Classical Roots" will perform. Admission to these concerts is free, starting at 12:00.

And in Lanzarote, on October 4, the Néstor Trio with "Echoes of the Atlantic Sound" will perform at the Agustín de la Hoz House of Culture. The start is at 20:00, admission is also free.

Glass Marcano – Principal Conductor of the Festival

Venezuelan conductor Glass Marcano will be the principal conductor at the festival for the first time. She is considered one of the most talented conductors in the world. She studied at El Sistema in Venezuela, and then became a finalist in the La Maestra competition in Paris in 2020, where she received the orchestra prize.

Since then, she has conducted the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Academy of La Scala Theater, the National Orchestra of Lyon, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogotá, and the Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra. At the age of 30, she became the first black woman to conduct a symphony orchestra in France, and the first Latin American woman to do so in Brussels.

She was invited to CLE 2025 because Venezuela is the main guest this year. The festival wants to unite continents through music, and this is a great opportunity!