Norman Looks Forward
We are looking forward to the next in the series of Festival de musica clasica Primavera 24 in the Fondeadero in Puerto del Carmen on 26th April. We have recently heard the beautiful classical violin work of Diego Bermudez Zmeava when he played in support of a choir who invited us all to a Bach family reunion party. Only a fortnight later we then heard him again playing in a trio with his mother, one of the island´s most loved musicians, and his mentor from the Conservatoire on the piano.
We spoke to Diego after that performance and told him we had previously featured an interview with his mother on these pages seven or eight years ago. She had spoken with us in interview about her young boy who was just starting at the music school. At the most recent concerts we had no idea that Diego was that boy. He seemed to us a mature and already highly accomplished musician, one of the many providing evidence of the Arrecife Conservatoire´s ability to identify talent.
Diego e-mailed our office this week to inform us of another forthcoming concert.. He also accepted our request for an interview, and that could well become an important piece in our archives as he seems certain to become a leading name in classical music around the Canaries and far beyond.
Events at this venue usually see us taking the water taxi from Puerto Calero up to Puerto Del Carmen, where we step off the boat into the La Valetta restaurant until the doors open at the theatre only twenty yards away.
With piano, two violins and catanuellas, this concert should be of a lovely tone and with Handel and Manuel de Falla on the programme it will be ´Some Enchanted Evening´.
Strangely, on our first ever holiday on Lanzarote some twenty years ago, and twelve years before we came to live here, the first concert we ever attended was a choral performance in this very theatre. It was in December and as night fell early, we got totally lost walking around the harbour looking for what we assumed would be a large and light and bright theatre, but nothing could we find. Hearing a lady singing to herself by her open front door, I sought directions in badly broken Spanglish, and suddenly she was walking away, but beckoning us to follow here. She led us about two hundred yards to some steps up to a courtyard. We stepped up and there was El Fondeadero, well concealed amongst houses and an administration office in a town square.
We were still early, however and so took a couple of front row seats and by the time of the recorded introduction to welcome the choir on stage the theatre was full to the rafters. The lady who had led us through the town and delivered us here, in her hair rollers and dressing gown, smiled down at us from the stage. She was the very elegant music director !
We know our way there now of course and we look forward to yet another concert in this beautifully lit harbour area. We hope we see you there.
