Madeira International Organ Festival 2024

The Regional Government of Madeira is promoting the thirteenth edition of the Madeira International Organ Festival. This event is one of the most significant festivals of its kind in the Iberian Peninsula, by virtue of the history of quality it earned on its own merits, and which we have become accustomed to.
As a result of a lucid investment strategy towards the preservation and dissemination of our regional organ heritage, this festival can be held year after year with the anticipated splendour, and the exquisite performance of this instrument - the organ, as artistic and cultural heritage of unique features.
This invitation to a journey of multi-sensory and insightful enjoyment is reflected in a rich and vast programme of ten concerts dedicated to improvisation and a Eucharistic solemnisation, which will take place between the 18th and 27nd of October, as announced in the programme. We anticipate exceptional moments of "rediscovery" of the uniqueness provided by each of these instruments.
The Madeira International Organ Festival would not be possible without the combined efforts of several partners, and for that reason I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Diocese of Funchal for their unsurpassable collaboration and their willingness to lend the churches involved. I would also like to thank the Festival's artistic director, Professor João Vaz, who once again lends all his time and expertise to this event, as well as the Coro de Câmara da Madeira (Madeira Chamber Choir) for their valuable role in the development of this festival.
I wish you all an excellent festival!

— EDUARDO JESUS —
SECRETÁRIO REGIONAL DE ECONOMIA, TURISMO E CULTURA

The art of Improvisation

In the context of Western music, the organ is the only instrument that has kept the practice of improvisation present uninterruptedly to this day. This presence – which, in other instruments, was lost as musical writing became more established – was largely due to the “utilitarian” function of the organist as a collaborator (or even protagonist) of the liturgy, which remained throughout centuries, adjusting itself to the transformations carried out in the ritual of the different Western Christian religions. The Madeira International Organ Festival, in its thirteenth edition, pays tribute to this facet of the organ – and of the organists –, which is as complex as it is spectacular.
Bach, Handel, Frescobaldi, Cabezón and many of the organist-composers that the History of Music reveres were, in their time, brilliant improvisers. The ability to improvise ornamentation on a written piece, or to spontaneously create a musical interlude, was part of the technical arsenal of any organist in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This stylistic improvisation (in both the above mentioned aspects) will be demonstrated by Sérgio Silva, André Ferreira and Fernando Miguel Jalôto.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Widor, Dupré, Cochereau and Lefebvre were more prominent in the field of improvisation than in the performance of written repertoire. The ability to improvise a work – that is, to conceive it in the moment it is performed – can be appreciated in the first concert of the festival, in which German organist Wolfgang Seifen will offer an entirely improvised recital. Other moments of improvisation, alternating with repertoire performance, will be provided, throughout the festival, by António Esteireiro, Charles Balayer, Christoph Hauser and Juan de la Rubia. Of the thematic material proposed to organists – from liturgical melodies to jazz – Gregorian Chant stands out, as particularly important source of inspiration for organ music, in the context of Catholic liturgy.
Along with the organists, the Madeira Classical Orchestra (conducted by Martin André), the Madeira Chamber Choir (conducted by Zélia Gomes), the Lisbon Gregorian Choir (conducted by Armando Possante) and the singers Mariana Moldão Martins and Carla Moniz will participate this year in the festival. Over the course of ten days, the organs of the churches of Funchal, Machico and Ponta do Sol will give voice to improvisations and works from the sixteenth century to the present day, expressing musical languages as varied as Renaissance polyphony, symphonic romanticism or jazz.

— JOÃO VAZ —
DIRETOR ARTÍSTICO