José Wolffer, General Director of Music UNAM
This type of exchange between students coming from France and those from Mexico is a unique life experience that opens many avenues, and this is the type of encounter that we look to foster with these collaborations.
The first performance on June 9th presented the masterpiece, A Sea Symphony, by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Eighty-five members of the COSU (the Sorbonne University Choir & Orchestra), several musicians from the Orquesta Juvenil Eduardo Mata (OJUEM) from UNAM and two musicians from the Jacobs School of Musica (Indiana University) joined the Coro de Madrigalistas de Bellas Artes. The Sea Symphony performance therefore brought together 139 artists on the stage of the Nezahualcóyotl Hall, which is located in the UNAM University Cultural Center.
For the artistic director of COSU, Nicolás Agulló, the presentation is "a great event because it is a monumental work, which is not heard every day or week anywhere in the world, not in England, France or anywhere else. It is a work that requires a large organ, a large choir, two soloists (soprano and baritone) and a huge orchestra".
The following day, they left Mexico City to perform in two other cities. The group presented a different repertoire, including the choir's a cappella program, "Let my love be heard", and Johannes Brahms' Symphony n°2. Both concert halls are exceptional venues: the first at the Teatro del Bicentenario (1600 seats) in León in the state of Guanajuato, on June 10th, followed by a performance at the Teatro José María Morelos (1300 seats) in Morelia in the state of Michoacán, on June 11th.
A century-long relationship
Nathalie Drach-Temam, president of Sorbonne University, and Guillaume Fiquet, vice president for international partnership traveled to Mexico City to attend the inaugural concert as part of the close cooperation between the two universities. The director of the UNAM-France branch, Rodolfo Zanella Specia, explained that the relationship between the National University and the Sorbonne goes back a little more than a century; in 1910, when the UNAM was re-founded, there was already a representative of the French institution in Mexico.
He added that there is extensive collaboration in student exchange at all levels, especially in the areas of science and engineering, medicine and, of course, the arts, music and heritage, so that one of the requests of Sorbonne University is an interaction with music students at UNAM.
The General Director of Music UNAM, José Wolffer, agreed, "This type of exchange between students coming from France and those from Mexico is a unique life experience that opens many avenues, and this is the type of encounter that we look to foster with these collaborations."
Three exceptional performances in Mexico City
