Fifteen years ago today came a magical date: 2010-2010 (20 OCT 2010), the day the Orfeón Pamplonés touched the sky by becoming the first Spanish choir to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York, alongside the Mariinsky Orchestra of St Petersburg, conducted by Valery Gergiev.
The New York Times reported on that concert, and the Spanish press headlined it "the miracle of the ordinary": a choir of schoolteachers, carpenters, pharmacists, lathe operators and pensioners had pulled off the feat of walking onto one of the stages most professional musicians dream of reaching once in a lifetime.
Those of us who know the Orfeón well know it was no miracle, but the result of a collective effort: turning up to rehearse in the Plaza del Castillo at least three times a week, for love of the music.
Fifteen years on (next to nothing in the history of the Orfeón), it now seems unthinkable that a Russian orchestra and a choir from Navarre should come together to make music in the United States. It should not be. Those of us lucky enough to live through it could not imagine a world in which this would be inconceivable. Today, sadly, it is.
What does not strike us as impossible, not yet, and does not strike us as a miracle either, is that 200 boys and girls and 130 adults still turn up to the Plaza del Castillo every day, in a project of living together that has already lasted 160 years.
The work of the Orfeón is more alive and more promising than ever. It is so because the institution is reinventing itself, redefining itself through a process that draws precisely on its collective intelligence. Not only to return to Carnegie Hall, which it will do again, no doubt about it, but above all to scale up its project of shared life and enjoyment in society, in whatever its area of influence turns out to be, from schools to the pensioners' clubs around us.
Let us hope that, fifteen years from now, what is not far-fetched is a group of different generations, trades, backgrounds and beliefs meeting every day to make music. And hundreds of children working, away from screens for a while, out of the WhatsApp groups and the easy hit, printing into their DNA, without knowing it, the habit of effort, of commitment and of listening that will shape their lives.
Let us pray that this does not turn out to be a miracle by then.A milestone
- 20/10-2010: the Orfeón Pamplonés became the first Spanish choir to perform at Carnegie Hall
- With the Mariinsky orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev.
- They sang Mahler's Second Symphony, a success with the audience and with the critics of the New York Times.
"The miracle of the ordinary" Headline in the Spanish national press
Joaquín Romero Roldán.