El retablo de maese Pedro: 100th anniversary PostClassical Ensemble in collaboration with The Foundation for Iberian Music Presents “Entwined: A Double Feature” PCE celebrates the 100th anniversary of the seminal opera “El retablo de maese Pedro” with animation, flamenco dancing and a premiere performance about Spanish artists Manual de Falla and Frederico Garcia Lorca, starring David Strathairn and Robin DeJesus See full PROGRAM here: RetabloDeMaesePedro In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Manuel de Falla’s seminal chamber opera El retablo de maese Pedro, inspired by Don Quixote, PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) will present Entwined: A Double Feature on Wednesday, April 19 at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater at 7:30pm. As the name implies, this concert, which has been named an advanced ‘critic’s choice’ by Washington Classical Review, will feature two separate performances. The evening will be centered around the 100th anniversary of the Spanish comic opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show), which is rarely performed in the United States but is a seminal work in the Spanish canon. This performance is presented in partnership with the Embassy of Spain as part of a global celebration of the opera’s anniversary. “Master Peter’s Puppet Show, written in 1923, is possibly Manuel de Falla’s best work,” PCE Music Director, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, “It’s a trip into the past but understood not as nostalgia but as the starting point of an original and innovative way for composition in a new Century.” The first presentation of the evening will be the first public showing of Entwined: Love’s Magicians, a new multi-disciplinary performance piece created by acclaimed playwright/director Derek Goldman (Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski). The piece is a ‘concert reading’ inspired by the deep and unlikely friendship between Federico García Lorca, widely regarded as the greatest Spanish poet of the twentieth century, and Manuel de Falla, Spain’s most prominent composer of the period. The role of Falla will be read by Emmy Award winner David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck, Nomadland, Where The Crawdads Sing) while Lorca will be read by Tony Award Nominee Robin DeJesus (Tick, Tick, Boom, In the Heights, Wicked, see following photo). The piece will feature projected visual design by Kevork Mourad, Flamenco artists, singer Ismael Fernandez, dancer Sonia Olla, and guitarist Ricardo Marlow, along with the PCE Ensemble. “On the surface Lorca and Falla were a study in contrasts, given Lorca’s homosexuality and radically expressive exploration of poetic and theatrical forms and Falla’s devout Catholicism and austerity,” says playwright/director Goldman. “But the story of their relationship is an inspiring account of two extraordinary artists bonded through a shared vision of art that emerges from and belongs to the soul of the people. It is also a tragic and timely account of artistic visionaries whose lives and work fell victim to a Fascist political regime.” Following Goldman’s piece, PCE will present a concert opera version of de Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro, written in 1923 and inspired by the second part of Don Quixote, set in the early 17th century Spain. In this collaboration with visual artist Kevork Mourad, the puppets that were used in original versions of the performance will be replaced by animated illustrations synced with the score, some created live on stage. The opera will be conducted by PCE Music Director Angel Gil-Ordóñez and performed by PostClassical Ensemble with an international trio of soloists, that includes vocalists Israel Lozano (tenor), Jennifer Zetlan (soprano) and José Sacín (bass-baritone). El retablo de maese Pedro was originally dedicated to Princess de Polignac who commissioned the work and who premiered it at her salon in 1923. In the opera, Don Quixote is watching a puppet play. It is a Medieval story of love and quarrels between Moors and Christians, in which Don Gayferos, a knight at Charlemagne’s court, frees his wife Melisendra, who was held captive by Moors. Entwined: A Double Feature will have a run time of approximately 90 minutes and include conversations contextualizing each piece prior to the performance as well as a post-concert discussion with Gil-Ordóñez, Derek Goldman, and others.Tickets to Entwined are available online through the Kennedy Center at: https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/classical-music/2022-2023/entwined-a-double-feature/. All tickets are $45. For other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Kennedy Center Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540. Angel Gil-Ordóñez, a frequent guest conductor across Europe, the United States and Latin America, Angel Gil-Ordóñez holds the positions of Music Director/Conductor of PostClassical Ensemble, Principal Guest Conductor of New York’s Perspectives Ensemble, and Music Director of the Georgetown University Orchestra. He also serves as advisor for education and programming for Trinitate Philharmonia, a program in León, Mexico, modeled on Venezuela’s El Sistema. Originally from Madrid, Spain, Gil-Ordóñez trained under Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996). Though Gil-Ordóñez’s musical affinities are global, he has long championed Spanish repertoire, including works and composers little-known outside Spain. In 2006 the King of Spain bestowed upon Gil-Ordóñez the Royal Order of Queen Isabella, the country’s highest civilian decoration, for advancing Spanish culture around the world, and in particular for advocating Spanish music in its cultural context. Derek Goldman is an award-winning international stage director, producer, festival director, playwright, adapter, developer of new work, teacher, and published scholar, whose artistic work has been seen around the country, Off-Broadway and at numerous major regional theaters, as well as around the world. He is Artistic & Executive Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, the first signature joint initiative of the School of Foreign Service and Georgetown College, with a mission “to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics.” He has received the President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at Georgetown and the Provost’s Award for Innovation in Teaching for his work as creator of In Your Shoes, an internationally recognized groundbreaking model for using performance to counter polarization. He is the director and co-author of the internationally celebrated production Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, starring David Strathairn, as well as co-director of the feature film adaptation Remember This. New York-based artist Kevork Mourad employs his technique of live drawing and animation in concert with musicians – developing a collaboration in which art and music harmonize with one another. Counted among his diverse collaborators are Yo-Yo Ma, Kim Kashkashian, and PCE, and they stretch from North America to African, Asia, and the Middle East. Mourad premiered his animated film, 4 Acts for Syria, at the Stuttgart Animation Festival and was the 2016 recipient of the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize. His works are in the permanent collection of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Mourad has been a resident teaching artist at Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Holy Cross (Worcester). PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) creates a welcoming, inclusive and joyful experience that nourishes the soul, touches the spirit and inspires the mind. Through the brilliant playing of some of the area’s most distinguished musicians, and an array of artistic mediums, PCE strives to capture each composer’s extraordinary vision along with the cultural, political and artistic landscape in which their music was created. www.postclassical.com
“Homenatge” commissioned by the Foundation for Iberian Music performed again (and again and again) Adam Kent just performed “Homenatge” by Tania León, the composition commissioned by the Foundation for Iberian Music in 2011. The piece was featured on “Between the Keys” with Jed Distler on February 14 2023 on WWFM. The program will be re-aired in the future and it may continue to be available for streaming. There’s an interview with pianist Adam Kent, in which the commission is discussed. The program also features Kent’s recording of Ernesto Halffter’s music recording and a voluptuous version of Manuel de Falla’s Fantasia Baetica by Paul Jacobs. “Homenatge” has been performed many times by Adam Kent including at Carnegie Hall and has been choreographed by Dance Theatre of Harlem and staged as such many times. Just recently (10/16/2023) CUNY faculty pianist by faculty pianist Thomas Sauer performed HOMENTAGE at our own Elebash Recital to great success. Our colleague Tania León, of course, is an emerita at The City University of NY, a Pulitzer prize winner, Grammy nominated, and Kennedy Center Honoree.
Africans, Natives, Roma, and Europeans: Transatlantic Circulations of Gesture in Music, Song, and Dance K. Meira Goldberg and Antoni Pizà are preparing a new conference, book, and digital resource following their previous successful initiatives including Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions (2022), Transatlantic malagueñas and zapateados in music, song and dance: Spaniards, natives, Africans, Roma (2019), and The Global Reach of the Fandango in Music, Song and Dance: Spaniards, Indians, Africans and Gypsies (2016). Considering the descendants of Native Americans, Africans, Roma, and Europeans equally, this would be the fifth in a series of international conferences on transatlantic circulations of music, song, and dance, working to revise Euro-centric cultural historiography through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue. All four past conferences, organized through the Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Grad Center and held in New York, Los Angeles, and Veracruz, in collaboration with the University of California Riverside, the Universidad Veracruzana and Universidad Cristobal Colón in México, and the Fashion Institute of Technology, a community college which is part of the State University of New York, have been published as anthologies and/or proceedings available open access on the internet. Having focused on the transatlantic circulations of genre (fandango, malagueñas and zapateados, and flamenco) and musical features (rhythm), and having met in the U.S. and in México, we turn our attention to the embodiment of gesture, and to Africa, as a foundational yet under-appreciated source of transatlantic—and indeed global—culture. In addition to expanding geographically, and in addition to the conference itself and the resulting book, we aim with this project to expand our output to create a permanent digital resource that will invite sustained engagement with scholars and students from around the world. The conference meeting is important in fostering dialogue and building an international community of scholars. Holding the conference in various geographical locations is essential because it encourages and facilitates the participation of local scholars and artists, whose work is then disseminated internationally through the resulting conference output. The proposed conference in Africa offers an opportunity for participants to learn about the theoretical, historiographical, and aesthetic perspectives of African scholars regarding Europe and the Americas and, vice versa, to contextualize, enrich, and revise our understanding of the cosmopolitan cultures of a continent that has so importantly shaped our own. Books are essential to global knowledge-building and sharing, and the books that have resulted from the previous conferences have enjoyed wide distribution. For example, the first book published in this series, The Global Reach of the Fandango in Music, Song and Dance: Spaniards, Indians, Africans and Gypsies is available open-access on the internet as vol. 12 of Música Oral del Sur, a publication of the Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía, and the print volume (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), is held in almost 800 libraries around the world. The digital platform aims to create a permanent site for this global community to come together, share ideas and research, and access all manner of virtual information. Modeled on sites such as RomArchive.eu, the Dominican Studies Institute at the City College of New York, Elizabeth Eva Leach’s Musicology, Medieval to Modern website, the CUNY Digital History Project, Amin Chaachoo’s Andalusian Music – Arabian Music – Modal Music website, Iberian Connections: Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies at Yale University, and the online database at the Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa María at Oxford University, the site will archive videos of performance, ethnographies, and all manner of lectures and conference presentations, as well archival resources, scholarly articles and blogposts, and, potentially, pedagogical and course-building materials. Thus, while the conference is held overseas, the benefits of participation will redound to the benefit of our U.S. partners, both in raising their profiles as international cultural institutions, and benefiting students seeking to imagine a sustainable and ethical global future. The team The lead institution for the purposes of the NEH grant would be FIT, and the Project Director would be K. Meira Goldberg, Adjunct Associate Professor in Film, Media, and Performing Arts at FIT and Scholar in Residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY, directed by Antoni Pizà, which would co-direct. Other U.S. institutional collaborators would include the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music at the University of California Riverside, directed by Walter A. Clark, and the Ashesi University Foundation, based in Seattle, Washington. International partners include Pashington Obeng, former Chair of the Department for Africana Studies at Wellesley College, affiliate of the Institute for Africana Studies at Columbia University, and Head of Humanities & Social Sciences at Ashesi University, a private, non-profit liberal arts university located in Berekuso, Ghana, and Kojo Yankah, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Pan African Heritage World Museum (PAHWM), located in Pomadze, Ghana, which has expressed enthusiastic interest in hosting the conference. Additional African partners include the Association of African Universities at East Legon, Ikbal Hamzaoui at the Institut Supérieur de Musique et Théâtre au Kef in Tunis, and Sébastien LeFèvre at Gaston Berger University, Saint-Louis, Senegal. European and Latin American partners include Raquel Paraíso and Jessica Gottfried in México, and Miguel Ángel Rosales at the Universidad Pablo Olavide in Sevilla.
Bretón’s Piano Quintet Performed in Madrid Bretón’s Piano Quintet, edited by Antoni Pizà and María L. Martínez of the Foundation for Iberian Music, has been performed once again. This time in the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid. The edition was also reviewed by Mundo clásico. The Fundación Juan March has also made available their recording of the portentous work rediscovered by researchers Antoni Pizà and María L. Martínez. Rediscovery and New Publication: Bretón’s Piano Quintet in G Major
The Way of the Moderns – Six Perspectives on Modernism in Music – Antoni Pizà, ed. The Way of the Moderns gathers the talks organized by the Barry S. Brook Center of Music Research and Documentation that took place from 2012 to 2016 at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY). Exploring the concept of musical modernism from many different perspectives―including the audience’s often initial rejection; the dominance of popular genres; the blurring of musical genres and categories; the alleged incapacity of modernism to express feelings and its intellectual aloofness; the struggle for an audience in times of a distracting attention economy; the transition from modernist to postmodernist aesthetics; the multicultural and collaborative aspects of many recent musical creations; and the need for questioning the ethics of musical works―they present a non-systematic and yet insightful assessment of some of the crucial issues around contemporary music. The texts address the changing consumption, creation, contexts, and valuations of today’s concert music and, at the same time, highlight the agency of its practitioners―composers, performers, scholars, critics, and the audience―who pursue “the way of the moderns.” Antoni Pizà is the director of the Foundation for Iberian Music, where he has organized dozens of events, including conferences, talks, and concerts. The Foundation is a project of the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at CUNY Graduate Center. Author of many books and articles, he has also taught for over twenty-five years at CUNY and has curated the lecture series on which this publication is based. ContentsAcknowledgementsList of FiguresIntroduction: Modernism, A Permanent Achievement,by Antoni PizàACT I: The Challenges of Modernistic Music,by Charles RosenA Conversation with Daniel J. WakinAudience Q&AACT II: We Are What We Hear, by Paul GriffithsA Conversation with Jeffrey Milarsky ENTRE’ACTE I: The Creative Pulse of Collaborative Aesthetics,by Philip Glass and Claire ChaseAudience Q&AACT III: Walking Among Noise: Tonality, Atonality,and Where We Go from Here, by Roger ScrutonA Conversation with Greil MarcusAudience Q&AENTR’ACTE II: Strings Attached, by David Harrington and Brooke GladstoneAudience Q&A Act IV: The Many Dangers of Music, by Richard TaruskinA Conversation with Scott BurnhamAudience Q&A Index https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503597737-1
Webinar: Beethoven’s Family Feuds Join us for this free webinar of the Ensemble for the Romantic Center, to be held on Thursday, 1 December, from 5:30 to 7:00pm. We will addresses Beethoven’s struggles to keep custody of his nephew Karl and his ongoing feuds with his family. Beethoven’s late style will be examined as an artistic sublimation of the pressing issues in his personal life, focusing on the profound aesthetic transformations in his late works. This webinar provides context for the upcoming Ensemble for the Romantic Century concert, Beethoven vs. Beethoven, to be held on on 15 December 2022. Panelists James Melo, musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and Director of the Brook Center’s Seminars of the Ensemble for the Romantic Century.Harvey Sachs, music historian and Beethoven biographer Link for RegistrationPlease use the link below to register for the webinar. Once you are registered, you will receive the actual link to join the webinar: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y6SDAnRITGiJOBFEY44fDw
Webinar: Reaching the Ears of the Nation: Frederick Douglass’ Narratives and the African American Musical Traditions Join us for this free webinar of the Ensemble for the Romantic Center, to be held on Monday, 7 November, from 5:30 to 7:00pm. We will investigate the repercussions and influence of Frederick Douglass’s narratives of freedom and personhood and their inspirational role in sustaining African American discourses in culture and the arts, with emphasis on the development of an African American classical music tradition and the cultural role of hip hop and rap music in modern American society. This webinar provides context for the upcoming Ensemble for the Romantic Century concert on 17 November. PanelistsJames Melo, Senior-Supervising Editor at the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), CUNY Graduate Center, and musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century. Jason Lee Oakes, Popular Music Editor, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), CUNY Graduate Center. Link for RegistrationPlease use the link below to register for the seminar. Once you are registered, you will receive the actual link to join the seminar.Register in advance for this webinar:https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oqdJsVuzQhOPjucmgB2fVg
The Body Questions: A Talk Series Sunday October 16, we were pleased to begin a series of book talks with the authors of The Body Questions There are seven talks in all over the next few months, and we are inviting everyone to attend, beyond the ones who are already participating. There are in total four events organized by The Foundation for Iberian Music Sunday 16 Oct 12:00-14:00 NY time, with Noel Allende Goitía, Miguel Ángel Vargas, and Antonio Cortijo Ocaña. Here is the Eventbrite link. Sunday 30 Oct 12:0014:00 NY time, with Karen Silen, Ryan Rockmore, Constance Valis Hill, Lynn Brooks, and Guillermo Castro. Here is the Eventbrite link. Sunday 6 Nov 12:0014:00 NY time, with Russell Brown, Clara Chinoy, Anna Shalom, and Gabriela Estrada Sunday 11 Dec 12:0014:00 NY time, with Scott Barton, Agnes Kamya, and Julie Baggenstoss These events will be bilingual in English and Spanish/ Estas presentaciones se realizarán en castellano e inglés. There are also three events being sponsored by Rosemary Cisneros at Coventry University featuring some of the Roma and Roma-allied authors in the book: Belén Maya, Miguel Ángel Vargas, and Russell Brown. These will happen on Nov. 14, 15, and 16 at 17:00-18:30 CET (Spain’s time). More details to follow, but you can register for these events here.
Analytical Approaches to World Music Symposium: Call for Papers Announcing the second installment of the Analytical Approaches to World Music symposium series, dedicated to theoretical, analytical, and cognitive approaches to rhythm and meter in all global musical traditions, past and present. The symposium will be held virtually on 1-2 June and on 8-9 June 2023, and will be hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center, the Brook Center, and IFTAWM. Our goal is to facilitate a gathering of some of the world’s leading scholars on these issues in a special four-day virtual research symposium the results of which will be available to scholars worldwide via publication in our eponymous open-access, peer-reviewed online journal. The call for papers is here. More information: There will be a total of 48 individual presentations. Of these, 16 will be invited presentations. The keynote speaker will be Daniel Avorgbedor (University of Ghana). A call for papers will be issued in late September. Paper presentations will be virtual with a duration of 30+15 minutes. Paper sessions will be held in parallel on June 1–2 and on June 8, and will include two parallel morning sessions (9:00–12:00) and two parallel afternoon sessions (14:00–17:00). The final day of the conference will convene on Friday, June 9 and be devoted to panel and discussion sessions exclusively while using the same schedule mentioned previously. Accordingly, the morning panel sessions (A and B) will meet from 9:00–12:00; the afternoon panel sessions (C and D) will meet from 14:00–17:00. Invited Speakers:Simha AromDaniel AvorgbedorStephen BlumSylvie Le BominSusanne FurnissKeith HowardDavid HuronKelly JakubowskiYonatan MalinRainer PolakJay RahnJohn RoederChris StoverDavid TemperleyMichael TenzerRenee TimmersRichard Widdess More information is available here.