Hello Carlos! You are a professor in Veterinary here at our university. Can you tell us a bit more about your professional profile?
Hello, my name is Carlos Garcés Narro, I am not a vet but an agronomical engineer and I arrived in University CEU Cardenal Herrera after I had been in the Agronomical School at University Miguel Hernández. I came to CEU in 2000 and I work in the animal production area, with contents related to ranching in the productive part and not that much into animal health. I try to improve animal performance, taking precaution with the environment and the animals’ wellness.
When did your musical vocation start?
When I was young I always liked to sing, in fact my parents had a record player and I loved to spend all day playing music, also I scratched all my parents’ records, all of them! I learnt all the songs that my parents used to listen to and also my mother liked to put me on the table to sing all the songs that I had learnt. After that I started school and when I was ten I joined my first chorus, later I went to another one, and finally I started studying in the conservatory, at the beginning I studied oboe and afterwards I started with singing technique…until now!
What kind of music is your favorite?
I like good music, I don’t care about the period: I like ancient music and contemporary music, any kind of style as long as the music sounds properly! Nowadays there is good and not that good music so I try to choose and take the good one. If I have to choose a type of music I would probably go for classical – because I had a classical training – but there are some modern things that I like so in this case I don’t have any problem.
How do you combine music and work?
For me it is not a job that allows me to live of music; it is more like a hobby, and I think it will continue that way as I spend a lot of hours here in the University. I try to combine them when I am off hours, I like to do lot of activities when I am out of work, and one of them is music. I still go to my master classes, once or twice a week if I can, and sometimes I do a concert or a recital, but always in an amateur way, not professionally!
Would you like to take a step further and work as a professional singer?
Of course, why not? I never had the opportunity to do it but if the opportunity arises…I really don’t know! I do not discard it, but I am getting older so it is already hard as it is, but I would love it, in the same way that I love my job here in this University so in that case I would try to combine both.
Would you recommend students to sign up in the CEU Choir?
I have been in touch with the CEU Choir for a long time, in fact I was a couple years singing and collaborating with them, but I could not continue for different reasons. For quite a while I have been a soloist so it is hard to settle into the choir now, of course I would encourage students to join the choir, when I know people that work with music or just love music like I do, I tell them about the choir and the Chamber Orchestra. Of course I understand that it is a hobby and you should love it but you also need to have free time.
Do you have any favourite musical piece or composer?
This is a hard question but I will say Giuseppe Di Stefano, like the soccer player, who is an old singer that I really like. He is a tenor, I love opera and there is a lot of composers that I like! Di Stefano was better when he was young, if I have to say others I would say Verdi, Puccini, Wagner…it is so hard to choose one of these because they all have their own attributes and their characteristics. If I have to tell you just one song I really like, this one of Giuseppe Di Stefano, that I think in his period was one of the best singers that you can listen to:
Is there a place in Valencia where you like to go listen to music?
I like to go to all the opera performances in the Palau de les Arts and I also like the Palau de la Música, because it has a great program and an amazing acoustic auditory. I have been to a lot of different places to listen to music and I think the Palau de la Música has one of the best acoustics in the world!
