The Bariloche International Music Festival (FIMBA) was born in 2019 with the idea of mixing sounds, styles, genres, audiences and aesthetics, and making them reach the public free of charge, financed by the province and with some sponsorships. Once again, there were several spaces, more or less alternative, that were integrated: the Araucanía Station, the Sarmiento Library, the downtown La Baita theater, the Cathedral and the legendary Musical Camping. All with the artistic direction of the musician Martín Fraile Milstein and the general production of Lucio Bellora.
Adrián Iaies, Ana Prada, Gabriel Sivak, Carlos Aguirre and Emiliano Linares provided clinical paths on their knowledge. Although, naturally, the most attractive thing happened in the twenty-odd concerts in which very different things happened.
Carlos Aguirre from Entre Ríos was invited by the settled Leopoldo Caracoche. The Brazilian Toquinho went with his bossa nova and his samba through La Baita in double function; He had the excellent Camilla Faustino as a guest, he sang with the Rio Negro orchestra and he had the Argentinian Gabriel Sivak in the arrangements and sitting at the piano. Juan Carlos Baglietto and Lito Vitale together with their children opened the festival with two presentations in the same room. The Bulgarian cellist Stanimir Todorov was brilliant with different orchestras or in his solo concert with the Bach suites, and the Polish pianist Anna
Miernik with repertoire from his country. There was jazz with the pianist Adrián Iaies and with the trio of Rodrigo Domínguez, Santiago Rapoport and Diego Pérez Beveraggi. The historic Opus Cuatro gave a very good concert in the Cathedral. The duos of Carlos Aguirre-Yotam Silberstein (with a new album) and the Chilean sisters Yorka performed, also at La Baita; and on the same stage, the Uruguayan Ana Prada delivered a beautiful set with the Rio Negro orchestra. She sang the María Silva from Entre Ríos. The vocal soloists -especially the soprano María Soledad Labanda in Mozart’s “Coronation Mass”- and the Tous Ensamble de La Plata choir directed by Emiliano Linares shone. And the region was also represented by Pepa Díaz, the violinist Jorge Calderari, the FIMBA Youth Orchestra, the Bariloche Youth Camerata, the Ventisquero Negro Ensemble and the rising rag picker Tobi Dolezor.
The Philharmonic Orchestra of Río Negro, conducted by Martín Fraile, an organization with a particular function that includes musicians from all over the province who come together for rehearsals and concerts with a full cast, acted as hostess and went through the entire festival, alone or with various soloists, and he was always up to the task. And the Trepún Percusión trio deserves a very special mention, for its originality and the seriousness of its work, members of that orchestra, who gave a brilliant concert at the Library with works that mixed recordings with live instruments.
