Program Notes

Cerulean—also caerulean—represents a palette of blues. A color seen on the seas, in lakes, in some minerals, flags, paintings and in bright, clear skies. A color full of intensity, life and energy.
Blue is also the color of the uniform of the Harmonie Wilhelmina Wolder Maastricht, "De Blouw vaan Wolder", one of the biggest wind bands in the city of Maastricht (The Netherlands), which in 2018 celebrates 110 years of history and where, for the past few years, I have had the pleasure of playing trombone under the direction of Ghislain Bellefroid. It is a family with whom I have grown as a musician and in which I have made some great friends. To all of them, with all my gratitude, I want to dedicate this piece.
Cerulean Overture follows the structural principles of classical overtures. A quick and frenetic introduction gives way to an almost unstoppable succession of melodies, alternating rhythmic and playful moments with others which are more lyrical, solemn and expressive. The score ends on a majestic climax, full of energy.

Julio Domingo (Caudete de las Fuentes, 1990) started writing music in his teens with the guidance of Miguel Ángel Mateu and Ferrer Ferran. He studied Composition in Castellón while working as a producer in the Nuestras Bandas de Música program and collaborating with several bands, orchestras, big bands and chamber music groups.
As a composer he has written a catalogue of more than 60 works for different settings and styles. Some of them have won prizes in international contests, such as the fantasy Dríades del Bosque (Italy, 2013) and the symphonic poem Leviathan (Cullera, 2022). In 2020 he wrote Versos al Alba as a test piece for the Certamen Provincial de Valencia and in 2023 he won the 3rd Concurso de Pasodobles Villa de Ayora. As an arranger he has prepared music for orchestras such as PhilZuid and the Royal Dutch Navy Band, and artists like the Australian soprano Mirusia Louwerse.
He has studied Conducting with Jan Cober and Ivan Meylemans at Conservatorium Maastricht, where he also founded the Maastricht Winds band. In 2019 he won the Golden Baton at the International Conductor’s Competition in Osnabrück (Germany), and in 2020 he was invited to conduct the MISA Youth Symphony Orchestra from Georgia.
He is currently studying Opera Conducting with Enrico Delamboye and conducts the bands in Beek en Donk and Ohé en Laak, the fanfare De Lauwerkrans Mopertingen and the Jack Million Orchestra, activities he combines with composing and arranging.

“Sucro Oppidum” is a work for wind band written in 2011 as part of the composer’s final project for his degree at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. It received a “Segnalazione all´unanimità” at the XXIX Concorso Internazionale di Composizione per Banda de Corciano (Italy) in 2013 and is dedicated to the author’s parents: Javier and Librada.
Lasting approximately 15 minutes, the piece pays homage from a personal artistic and subjective perspective to the Valencian town of Cullera, which is located on the banks of the river Júcar, next to the Mediterranean sea and has a distinguished past and cultural history.
The title refers to the ancient Roman town of Sucro, identified as the Contestani Iberian settlement previously known by the Greeks as Sicania, as well as the encampment established by Publio Cornelio Escipión “El Africano” at the halfway point on his journey from Tarraco (Tarragona) to Cartago Nova (Cartagena) to conquer this last city.
According to various texts, Sucro was found in an elevated location (oppidum) on the Mediterranean coast and next to the mouth of the river Júcar. It was a settlement with great strategic and commercial importance. Although there are disagreements concerning the exact location of this ancient town (Cullera, Albalat de la Ribera, Sueca or Alcira), recent studies suggest that Sucro Oppidum may have been sited at the summit of the Muntanya de Cullera (L'Alt del Fort), while the Mansio Sucronem, mentioned in the majority of the itineraria from the imperial period, may have been located in today’s Albalat de la Ribera (L'Alteret de la Vintihuitena) and the Portum Sucrone, mentioned in later itineraria, corresponds to L'Illa dels Pensaments, in the Faro de Cullera.

Javier Martínez Campos was born in Valencia in 1989. He studied cello and composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory, going on to further his training at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Dusseldorf (Germany), the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid), Miguel de Cervantes European University, IGECA and the University of Castilla-La Mancha.
As a performer, he was the Assistant Principal Cello for the Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao from 2015 and 2019, an academist of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Orquesta Juvenil Iberoamericana, the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España, the Netherlands Jugend Orchestra and the Jove Orquestra de la Generalitat Valenciana, and he has collaborated with ensembles such as the Duisburger Philharmoniker, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Kammeroper Köln, the Orquesta de Cámara Andrés Segovia, and the Banda Municipal de Bilbao, among others.
He has won 30 international prizes for composition and performance, including the 9th Premio de Composición Musical para Orquesta “Andrés Gaos” (A Coruña, 2011) and 1st prize in the 4th Concorso Internazionale di Composizioni “Cittá di Sinnai” (Italy, 2012). He won the 2nd Premio Talento Joven de la Comunidad Valenciana Levante-EMV/Bankia (Valencia, 2014) and 2nd prize in the Gaetano Amadeo Prize contest (Italy, 2021).
As a composer he has received commissions from the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, the INAEM, the JONDE and the Ministerio de Cultura y Educación, the Fundación SGAE/AEOS - Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, L'Orchestre Parfum (Paris) and BilbaoMusika, among others. His works have been performed in Spain, the USA, Colombia, France, Japan, Germany, Austria, and the UK, by soloists and ensembles such as the Symphony Orchestras of RTVE, Bilbao, Galicia, Euskadi, the Municipal Wind Bands of Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Castellón, Albacete, Almería, and the University of North Carolina Wind Ensemble.
He is currently the Assistant Principal Cello of the Orquesta Nacional de España and a composer.

Commissioned by the Florida State University (FSU) School of Music, with funding assistance from affiliated FSU partners and the Division of Cultural Affairs of the Florida Department of State, Ceremonies (previously entitled Symphony for Winds) was premiered by the FSU Wind Orchestra, conducted by James Croft from the National American Band Masters Association in Tallahassee, Florida.
Zwilich's extensive experience as an ensemble performer is clearly shown in this idiomatic work. Its three movements are: Maestoso/Allegro, featuring the development of three motifs; Elegy (in memory of Manley P. Whitcomb, director of bands and coordinator of music education at FSU from 1953 to 1977); and Allegro Vivo, beginning with an active melody and concluding with a return to the opening Maestoso.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was born in Miami in 1939. She began her music studies as a violinist and received a Bachelor of Music from Florida State University in 1960. She went on to study composition at Julliard, becoming the first woman to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. In 1983 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Her earlier works were atonal but later became postmodernist and neo-romantic. Her prizes include the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Music, the Arturo Toscanini Music Critics Award, the Ernst von Dohnányi Citation, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Grammy nominations, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Prize, the Alfred I. Dupont Award, the Miami Performing Arts Center Award, the Medaglia d'oro in the G.B. Viotti Competition and the NPR and WNYC Gotham Award, among others.
She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1995 she was appointed as the first Composer’s Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall and in 1999 she was named Musical America’s Composer of the Year.
A prolific composer in virtually all media, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s works have been performed by most of the leading American orchestras and by major international ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra, as well as by the most distinguished conductors such as Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Georg Solti, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, Jesús López-Cobos and Zubin Mehta, among many others.

The village of Gata de Gorgos, in the province of Alicante, is home to a symbol of faith and resistance: a white tree which protected the village’s inhabitants during the French siege in 1812. Unfortunately, in an act which only added to its legend, this hundred-year-old poplar tree was uprooted during the Spanish Civil War and today only a pictogram of it remains, gifted by the local painter José Costa Signes and housed in the Town Hall.
During its life, The white tree became a place of pilgrimage in the 19th century and, as reflected in village records, it attracted illustrious visitors such as Teodor Llorente and tourists from ‘Lo Rat Penat’. The legend says that during the Napoleonic Wars the French captured the mayor and rector of Gata, sparking an initial battle in the Senija gorge. In this encounter, the French were obliged to retreat after being ambushed several times by the local resistance. Subsequently, and in a second assault by the French, the inhabitants of the village were forced to take shelter in the village hermitage, which was watched over by the white poplar.
The legend tells that after besieging the village, the French went up to the hermitage and, on arriving at the white tree, close to the entrance to the sanctuary, the tree began to move and emit an intense light which blinded the soldiers and, most importantly, frightened their horses. Consequently, the animals refused to advance and, in the face of this marvel, the French lifted the siege and retreated. As a result, the white tree saving the inhabitants of the village of Gata de Gorgos became seen as a miracle.

Pere Vicalet is a conductor, composer and digital artist as well as a teacher of Sonology at the Electroacoustic Laboratory of the CSM Valencia. Trained between Valencia and Budapest, his works stand out due to their multidisciplinary combination of different types of music which fuse technology and visual art.
In his work as a conductor, Vicalet seeks immersion in multisensory experiences through transdisciplinary artistic projects which use video, lighting, sensors and other technological-theatrical effects to interpret complete works of art. As a composer, Vicalet is distinguished by his groundbreaking use of technology, including electronic instruments and software, to generate original textures together with new sounds. Despite their complexity, his compositions are profoundly expressive and musical, exploring new frontiers in the use of technology in the fields of creation, research, teaching and learning new types of music. He also stands out as a digital artist, with pioneering performances which explore the intersection between musical art and technology.
Vicalet has appeared all over the world and has received various prizes, including the 2017 Joven Talento Prize and the Miguel Hernández Alicantine Culture Prize in the category of Innovación de la Cultura a través de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación in the music sector. Moreover, he has received numerous commissions, such as the work Peak in Tanz, a piece for orchestra and electronic instruments with percussion and a solo digital artist premiered by the ORTVE, as well as Guerrer de la Valltorta, commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the FSMCV, which included 120 mobile devices and more than 5000 musicians.
Pere Vicalet, a leader in the field of music and contemporary art, is a respected and influential figure who belongs to the new artistic-technological classes. His research and work show him to be a guide and reference point for the new emerging artistic and technological archetypes of the 21st century.