Designed as a space for dialogue between history and imagination, where the popular and the erudite, tradition and artifice, heritage and reinvention coexist, each program of the season affirms music as a critical and poetic language, capable of engaging with the present without renouncing its complexity. In this way, we invite audiences to listen from a place of curiosity and wonder, understanding the concert as a deeply aesthetic and intellectual experience.
2026 Concert Series
De Majos and Petimetres; Cosmopolitan Music from the Madrid Salon
Between courtly elegance and popular wit, Bourbon Madrid was a crucible of contrasts. In its salons, Italian grace, French sobriety, and Spanish temperament coexisted, shaping a profoundly cosmopolitan musical culture. Of Majos and Petimetres presents a space where Enlightenment refinement and vernacular spirit met during one of the most vibrant periods in Spanish musical history. The figure of the majo, symbol of popular pride and Madrid identity, stands in contrast to the petimetre, the Francophile aristocrat—cultured, refined, and enamored with foreign fashions. These two archetypes—one spontaneous and visceral, the other sophisticated and cosmopolitan—defined not only social customs but also the musical taste of a city opening itself to the world without renouncing its character. The music of the Madrid salon reflects precisely this dialogue between the local and the foreign, where Spanish dances merged with the French galant style and Italian models, creating a hybrid repertoire of great charm and subtlety.
Julián Navarro, conductor & guitar
Friday, May 29 – Teatro Otraparte (Envigado)
Saturday, November 14 – Teatro Unión (Honda)
Between theatrical artifice and boundless imagination, the Baroque created a universe in which music became the language of the improbable. Battles, tempests, talking animals, and chivalric heroes came alive through sound, inviting listeners into a world of wonder and enchantment. This program transports us to that stage where emotions and images become sonic narratives, revealing the ingenuity with which Baroque composers nourished the imagination.
The narrative spirit of the Baroque was fueled by wonder, by the desire to transform reality through artifice, and by a fascination with exploring the limits of the possible through sound. Once Upon a Time invites us to hear music as storytelling—a mirror of the human imagination that transcends eras and styles, revealing a shared fascination with dreams, humor, passion, and mystery.
Sarah Cranor, conductor & violin
Saturday, July 18 – Auditorio Fabio Lozano (Bogotá)
In 1740, the French writer Hubert Le Blanc published a treatise defending the viola da gamba against the “pretensions” of the cello. Beneath this famous dispute lay deeper questions: What do we truly seek in music—eloquence or intimacy? Innovation or memory? Power or subtlety?
This program revisits that historical debate from a contemporary perspective. Works by Marin Marais, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Johann Sebastian Bach present the viola da gamba and the cello as bearers of two distinct sensibilities: one rooted in an aristocratic and vocal tradition, the other shaped by the rise of public musical life and changing aesthetic tastes.
Rather than resolving the conflict, the program reveals how difference itself can become an inexhaustible source of imagination, expression, and beauty. Two former rivals once again share the stage, reminding us that some of the most fruitful conversations emerge precisely from what sets us apart.
David Esteban Escobar, conductor & cello
Irene Micaela Henao, viola da gamba
Friday, July 10 – San José Chapel (Bogotá)
The Bachs; A Family Portrait
The Bach family embodies, like no other, the idea of music as innovation, heritage, and thought. Across several generations, this dynasty shaped a craft that spans the late Baroque and anticipates new sensibilities, without ever losing its artisanal rigor or expressive depth. This program offers an intimate portrait of that familial constellation, where each composer asserts a distinct voice within a shared horizon. Johann Bernhard brings the clarity and majesty of the French style; Wilhelm Friedemann astonishes with his untamed imagination and experimental character; Carl Philipp Emanuel unfolds a rhetoric charged with emotional intensity; and Johann Sebastian distills an aesthetic synthesis whose relevance transcends time and style. More than a genealogy, this program reveals a way of thinking about music as a continuous practice—transmitted, questioned, and transformed.
Guillermo Salas, conductor & violin
Saturday, October 10 – Colegio Alemán (Medellín)
Jarabí; Memories of Africa in the Iberian Baroque
This program offers a scenic and musical journey through the Iberian Peninsula of the 16th and 17th centuries, revealing a profound—and long silenced—dialogue between Iberian and African cultures. Through vocal and instrumental repertories, it highlights how rhythmic, textual, and embodied practices of African origin permeated Iberian Baroque music, particularly in festive, theatrical, and popular contexts. At its core are villancicos known as negros, negrillas, or guineos—musical forms that relied on stereotyped representations of the “Black” figure in Golden Age culture. Interpreted today through a critical lens, these works simultaneously reveal mechanisms of caricature and the deep African imprint on Iberian music. Jarabí also includes dances and instrumental pieces with African or Afro-Iberian roots, belonging to genres that circulated intensely between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, becoming true vehicles of cultural mestizaje.
The term Jarabí, which may be translated as “beloved,” also refers to a well-known West African song popularized since the 1960s by kora players in countries such as Mali, Gambia, and Guinea. This symbolic resonance creates a bridge between past and present, illuminating the memory of anonymous and historically marginalized subjects whose traces remain fundamental to Iberian and Latin American music.
Jorge Molina, conductor
November, date and venue to be announced