Rolex Ambassador for the Arts
Rolando Villazón is a Rolex Ambassador for the Arts. Rolex’s enthusiasm for the arts and culture is part of the legacy of the values of the company’s founder Hans Wilsdorf. In keeping with a desire to foster excellence and inspire future generations, the brand has developed enduring partnerships with many of the world’s top artists, who always reach further to attain the pinnacle of their discipline.
In 2020, Mr. Villazón participated in Rolex’s “Perpetual Music” initiative. A longtime supporter of classical music and opera, Rolex backed a trio of summertime concerts that were broadcast online to a global audience. Conceived to support musicians and artists whose worked have been derailed by the pandemic, the Perpetual Music concerts took place in August and September 2020, in Italy, France, and Germany. Villazón alongside, soprano Sonya Yoncheva, tenor Juan Diego Flórez, and the violinist Renaud Capuçon, were the artists given carte blanche by Rolex to design three “Perpetual Music” concerts that lifted the gloom and revived the musical world.
In asking their star soloists to recruit musicians of their choice to perform at the concerts, Rolex also offered a hand of support to more than 100 artists, singers and musicians who had been struggling to survive. As Villazón said in his introduction to his concert (co-curated with Capuçon) at the Palais Garnier: “There are a lot of singers, a lot of musicians, who find themselves without work, and, actually, many of them are looking for other jobs to bring food to their table, not jobs that their vocation is about.”