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Marc Migó awarded the Foundation for Iberian Music Composer’s Commission 2022

Marc Migó has been awarded the Foundation for Iberian Music 2022 Composer’s Commission. The composer has written a series of twelve piano preludes entitled L’ILLA DESERTA:  Preludes for Piano, Book 1, about which Migó has written the following:

“The title “L’illa deserta” refers to a conversation I had with Dr. Philip Lasser early in my studies at Juilliard. The conversation led to being genuine in my compositional endeavors, hence, he suggested I write “desert island music.” This meant to compose without the need to prove anything to anyone but instead to follow my inner, unconditional voice, as if I was living on a desert island, far removed from civilization. Following that precept, I composed 12 preludes that make up this book which inhabits another kind of island; one not deserted but imbued with memory and dreams. Preludes 1, “Tarantella,” and 4, “Evocació,” are based on my souvenirs as a child becoming acquainted with Catalan folksongs. Prelude 2, “Elegia,” evokes the feeling of emptiness that comes when losing something precious. Prelude 3, “Scherzetto,” is a celebration of two dear friends of mine who both have exceptionally joyous and resilient personalities. Prelude 5, “Melodia,” is a homage to Myroslav Skoryk (1938-2020), a Ukrainian composer whom I admire and who embodies my affinity towards the Slavic world and Prelude 6, “Recuerdos del Casar,” invokes my Spanish roots. Despite the deep melancholy that characterizes Prelude 7, “Melangia,” the inspiration to write it did not come from any romantic heartbreak, but from the more prosaic (and, luckily, way more common) event of not being awarded a prize I had been seeking. Preludes 8 to 10 —“Tristor,” “Lament,” and “Capsa de música,” respectively—expand upon the reflective and sorrowful atmosphere captured in “Melangia.” Finally, Preludes 11, “Toccata,” and 12, “Mephisto’s Disco,” share toccata-like and virtuosic elements, the latter one being based on a particularly wild experience I had at a nightclub with a far less exciting name than that of the prelude in question.”

You may download the first prelude here:

L’ILLA DESERTA PRELUDES 5

 

You may also listen to the first prelude, “Cançó” here:

 

A full recording of the Preludes can be found here:

 

Antoni Pizà, the Director of the Foundation, expressed his gratefulness and excitement about these piano preludes, which announce the relaunch of the series Composer’s Commissions, which have had in the past many eminent composers including Tania León, Benet Casablancas, Paquito D’Rivera, Antoni Parera Fons, Albert Guinovart and many others.  See complete list here.

The work will be premiered in full by Marisa Gupta in Saratosa, FL on Dec 15, 2023 with a subsequent performance in St Petersburg, FL. In addition on September 30 Kiryl Keduk will play Preludes  8, 9, and 10 at Bechstein Hall in Berlin and Víctor Braojos will perform the same pieces in London.

Click here to watch a fascinating interview between Antoni Pizà and Marc Migó

 

Coros y Danzas: Folk Music and Spanish Nationalism: A Conversation Between Antoni Pizà and Daniel Jordan

Daniel David Jordan has just published Coros y Danzas:  Folk Music and Spanish Nationalism in the Early Franco Regime, 1939-1953.

In the following conversation Dr. Jordan discusses his book with Antoni Pizà, the Director of the CUNY Foundation for Iberian Music.

Currently, Dr. Jordan is also also organizing “Worlds Apart,” a two-day conference and recital series that explores how refugees and displaced peoples in Canada have used music to “fill” cultural absences, create diasporic communities, and build intercultural bridges since 1945.

You can see more details here https://www.worldsapartjhi.com/.

The event will take place on May 25-26, 2024, at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music. It is funded by the Jackman Humanities Institute.

NY Andalus Ensemble Upcoming Performance

The New York Andalus Ensemble, in conjunction with the Foundation of Iberian Music and La Nacional, presents

Tajdid (Renewal)

An evening of music and song from al-Andalus and North Africa

For five hundred years, Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side by side in medieval Iberia, sharing their arts and sciences to create a scintillating, multicultural tradition of music and poetry. Singing in Arabic, Hebrew, and Ladino to reflect this cultural pluralism, the New York Andalus Ensemble presents spiritual texts and songs of love and everyday life in Al-Andalus, emphasizing the expressive quality of the region’s shared tradition even as it respects the individual cultures that comprise it. Meticulous attention is paid to authenticity of style and pronunciation as ensemble members, hailing from Algeria, Syria, Israel, Morocco, and the United States, pool their linguistic and musical expertise.

“You won’t want to miss the chance to see such a diverse and versatile group.” —Spain Culture, New York

Musicians’ Self-Portraits from the Renaissance to the Digital Age

Antoni PIZÀ, director of the Foundation for Iberian Music, will present “Staging a Musical Self though Paper, Canvas, and The Screen: Musicians’ Self-Portraits from the Renaissance to the Digital Age” at the Ictm Study Group on Iconography of the Performing Arts, Università Roma Tre – Fondazione Teatro Palladium (Rome, 18–20 May 2023)

Schoenberg’s Self-Portrait

Musicians, he argues, have engaged in visual self-representation at least since the Renaissance and they have continued the tradition all the way to modern times with contemporary practices including selfies and generative technology and AI art. The practitioners include so-called classical composers (Schoenberg is a well-known case) and performers (Caruso, for instance), but also pop singers and musicians (Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith, among others). The media used varies from oil on canvas to drawings on paper, from traditional photography to digital media. In some instances, there are grave, pompous self-representations, but caricatures also abound (e.g., Donizetti). There are also many miscategorized self-portraits (i.e., portraits misattributed to their subject), and many more purposely fake or mocking self-portraits including contemporary Roman musician and comic Federico Maria Sardelli, which would indicate that the category of “self-portrait” adds value and prestige to any visual artifact. Furthermore, many visual artists, especially during the Renaissance, present themselves as faux musicians, possibly as a sign of nobility or education. Women, slowly but surely, have also claimed a space in the realm of musicians’ self-portraits since many of them, belonging to the higher echelons of society, were both visual artists and active musicians (Ducreaux and Schröter, among others). In some instances, the musician is truly obsessed with his or her own image to the point that, in addition to visual self-representation, he or she also provides written autobiographies and even musical self-portraits in sound (Spohr, for instance). In the end, any attempt to create a taxonomy of “musicians self-portraits” amounts to a serious interrogation of the usual categories of “self-portrait,” “musician,” and “artist” and to the staging of a vulnerable, doubtful self that wants to be reasserted.

Paperback edition of The Body Questions

We are pleased to inform you that your book ‘Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions’ has now been published as a paperback.



Please visit our website (https://www.cambridgescholars.com) to see your paperback book, at its new price, £33.99. Your author discount of 40% will still apply, which means you can buy copies of your book at £20.99.

Your author discount code is AUTHOR40 and you are welcome to share the discount code with friends, family, colleagues, students and others.

Please note that the discount is intended to be used for individual purchases only, not institutional purchases. We will be continuing to market the book in hardback and wide-access eBook to our library and institutional customers.

Enjoy!

Poems without Words: Albert Guinovart’s Homage to Alicia de Larrocha for her 100 Anniversary

Poems Without Words.  Thursday, June 22, 2023 8 PM Carnegie Hall.

Poems Without Words comes out at a time when our lives were doomed to fear and sadness, moments when Guinovart wanted to give us rays of hope and confidence in a better future, publishing a piece every day on his social networks so that we feel accompanied. Poems Without Words will be presented on June 22 in one of the most prestigious and emblematic venues in the world, Carnegie Hall in New York. The concert, was dedicated to the memory of Alicia de Larrocha, with whom Albert Guinovart maintained a close professional and admiring relationship.  Guinovart was the 2014 Composers Commission recipient awarded by The Foundation for Iberian Music.

 

 

See full program in Catalan, Spanish, and English:

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_English

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_Catalán

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_Español

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/06/22/Albert-Guinovart-Piano-0800PM

https://www.miottaemoliere.com/poems-without-words-carnegie-hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Cansinos Bros. to Rita Hayworth

Kiko Mora, professor of Communications at the University of Alicante, Spain, will present a talk on SPANISH DANCE, RACE, AND NATION IN THE US: FROM THE CANSINO BROTHERS TO RITA HAYWORTH.

See eventbrite link.

In January 1913, Sevillian dancers Elisa and Eduardo Cansino arrived in New York to perform for socialite and cultural maven Marion Stuyvesant-Fish. Soon the Cansinos were being featured in vaudeville shows and musical comedies all over the country. Their rapid rise, along with the outbreak of World War I, led the rest of the Cansino brothers (José, Paco, Ángel, Antonio and Rafael) to cross the Atlantic in search of their own portions of fame and fortune. By 1920, all the Cansino siblings had settled in Manhattan and would spend their entire lives in the USA. Among the best-known Spanish dancers here for at least the first half of the twentieth century, the Cansinos had an outsized impact on the US imagination.

In this lecture professor Mora traces the professional careers of the Cansino family as dancers, teachers and Hollywood choreographers from the perspective of race and national identity. The Cansinos gained the spotlight just as the US was emerging as a superpower on the global stage. How did the Cansinos perform the contradictory images of Spain as both conquistador­—the first American superpower—and “Moorish”/“Gypsy”? They played up Spain’s kinship with the US as both White and European while simultaneously conjuring Spain’s darkly exotic Otherness. At this pivotal moment in the rise of the imperial US, such oscillating images of Spain fed a US fantasy of racial purity, signaling both kinship with (White) Europe and (racialized) superiority in the wake of successful conquest. In this telling, the US had successfully expunged its Native, African, and Spanish American cultural inheritance by folding it into an emerging modernity. By contrast, Spain’s Whiteness was shadowed by miscegenation and haunted by the fall of its once-great empire. What famed jazz artist Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge” thus designated an inferior and alien off-whiteness. Spanish dance, as a metonym of Spain, treaded the narrow edge between White European dances and Black Afro-American dances, a liminal position that the Cansinos had to negotiate throughout their careers.

Despite the Cansinos’ efforts to whitewash their dancing by claiming origins in “Old Spain” (in the anti-modern sense of the term), the truth was that many of their acts had a decidedly modern, Afro-American aspect. Flamenco (and the Cansinos) tapped into the vibrant rhythms of popular dance by drawing from up-to-date Afro-Cuban dance, but simultaneously sought to legitimate these dances as “national” by evoking Spain’s indigenous “primitivism.” Thus, the Cansinos’ choice of repertoire situated Spanish dance on a borderline in two related ways. First, they tuned in to the fashionable rhythms of the day in order to make their act commercially successful, but without conceding their pedigree of Spanish tradition and refined technique. Secondly, the subtitles of their dances (e.g., “The Dance of Grace”), evoked the classical antiquity of Roman “Hispania,” so attractive to artists and audiences of US modern dance.

            White for Blacks, Black for Whites, Latino for Anglos, European for Latin-Americans, the Cansinos’ dilemmas would finally be resolved in the figure of Margarita del Carmen Cansino, the world-famous actress and dancer known as Rita Hayworth. 

Alicia de Larrocha at 100

Klavierhaus  presents pianist Adam Kent in a two-concert centennial tribute to Alicia de Larrocha – Saturday and Sunday May 20 and 21, 2023 at 7 p.m.

With guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna

Organized by Institut Ramon Llull and co-sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music.

 


• Saturday evenings May 20 at 7p.m, a concert including works for piano and voice composed by, dedicated to, or disseminated by Alicia de Larrocha, including several New York premieres.  Composers will include:  Alicia de Larrocha, Frank Marshall (her teacher), Joan Torra (her husband), Carlos Surinach, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, Federico Mompou, Xavier Montsalvatge, Lleonard Balada, Isaac Albeniz, Mateo Albeniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Antoni Soler.

This event will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Candice Agree, Joseph Patrych, and the artists.

• Sunday May 21 at 7pm, guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna will join Adam Kent for an additional event.

 

 

 

A personal reflection from Adam Kent

“When I was 11 years old, my grandparents took me to hear the Catalan pianist Alicia de Larrocha in concert at Avery Fisher Hall. I was looking forward to the first half of the program, which included music by composers familiar to me—Bach, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. The second half looked more daunting—dedicated entirely to works by a Spaniard named Manuel de Falla, whose last name I assumed rhymed with “Paula”. Traffic was heavy coming into Manhattan that afternoon, and we missed the entire first half. It didn’t take more than the first few notes of Falla’s “Danza de la molinera” to make me realize that all was not lost. All at once, I found myself seduced by the robust folkloricism of this music, coupled to the exotic harmonic world and fanciful voicing of so much French Impressionistic music. Ever since then, the music of Spain has been central to my work as a performing artist and educator.”

 

ADAM KENT                                                                                                 

www.adamkentmusic.com

Pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music on four continents. A winner of the American Pianists Association Fellowship and Simone Belsky Music Awards, Dr. Kent also received top prizes in the Thomas Richner, the Juilliard Concerto, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competitions, and is a recipient of the Arthur Rubinstein Prize and the Harold Bauer Award.  Dr. Kent made his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in 1989 and is a favorite on N.Y.C. area radio stations.

His recently released recording of the piano music of the Cuban-American composer Tania León entitled “Teclas de mi piano” has garnered critical praise from The New York Times, which reported, “The pianist Adam Kent has the measure of León’s sound throughout, whether he’s dealing with student pieces written in the 1960s or more recent items like “Homenatge,” from 2011. In the latter, he brings a virtuoso’s zest to the dance rhythms and bluesy clusters that cavort in the composition’s opening minutes. But he also offers a patient, less showy sensibility during the ruminative airs of the final minutes…Throughout, Kent pays as much attention to León’s formal invention as to the way she reworks her diverse inspirations.” All About the Arts enthuses about the disc “…the gifted Adam Kent triumphantly takes on every one of the pianistic hurdles contained in Tania León’s panoply of works.” Among his other critically acclaimed commercial recordings are a CD of Ernesto Halffter’s complete piano music on Bridge Records and performances of chamber works by Joaquín Turina, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez with the Damocles Trio and Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton on the Claves label.

The music of Spain and Latin-America has long been a specialty of Dr. Kent’s, whose advocacy has been acknowledged by the Spanish government on numerous occasions. In 2011, King Juan Carlos I of Spain honored the pianist by bestowing Spain’s Orden al Mérito Civil, and the Spanish Consulate has also sponsored appearances by Dr. Kent at Weill Recital and Merkin Concert Halls. The Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture awarded him a grant for Música por doquier/Hispanic Music Everywhere, a year-long celebration of Spanish and Latin-American music with the Damocles Trio and Spanish composer and conductor Salvador Brotons, and The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU have also sponsored a number of Dr. Kent’s Hispanic-themed projects. Dr.  Kent has also won grants to commission new works from Tania León, Salvador Brotons, Miguel-Ángel Roig-Francolì, and others. He has contributed performances and interviews to documentaries on Spanish composers Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Federico Mompou. Ms. León’s music has been an area of particular advocacy for Dr. Kent, who has programmed her works in concerts throughout the world, including a version of Homenatge choreographed by Pedro Ruiz for Dance Theater of Harlem.

Since 2016, Dr. Kent has been a professor of music at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where he was recently awarded the 2023 Susan Sutton Smith Award for Academic Excellence. Summers have found him serving as Director of Cultural Outreach at the Burgos International Music Festival and teaching and performing at the Summit Music Festival in N.Y, Alberta Pianofest in Edmonton, Canada, and the Cursos de Verano of the Fundación Princesa de Asturias in Oviedo, Spain. He received a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. He holds as well B.M. and M.M. degrees from Manhattan School of Music, where he was a student of Solomon Mikowsky. In April 2023, Dr. Kent began a three-year tenure on the American Fulbright Specialist roster.

Mezzo Soprano Anna Tonna has been described as “mezzo heroine who knows how to sing Rossini” by the Rossini Gessellschaft and as “showing off her warm, secure mezzo-soprano to maximum advantage” by the New York Magazine; accolades such as these explain her constant demand as a recitalist and opera singer in both Europe and the Americas. The combination of a highly developed coloratura with a full, balanced, flexible lower register have guaranteed her acclaim as a lyric mezzo, both in familiar roles Rosina, Carmen, Dorabella, as well as in more rare repertoire by Paisiello, Vivaldi, Mascagni, Zandonai and Giordano. 

Additionally, Anna’s passion for excellence in the recital genre have garnered her increasing acclaim in both the U.S. and Europe, particularly her path breaking explorations of the repertoire of composers from Spain and Latin America. Anna’s recitals are a source of expectation and excitement in New York City, where she has performed at both the Alice Tully Hall and Rose Center of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, New York’s Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The same excitement greets her appearances in Spain, with performances at the Auditorio Nacional de España, Teatro del Escorial and the Academia Marshall in Barcelona.

She has collaborated with Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, Festival Iberoamericano de las Artes in Puerto Rico, Música de Cámara of New York, El Festival de Segovia, Joy in Singing, Elysium Between Two Continents and the Nassau Music Festival among others. Of note among the countless recital of songs are appearances at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the St. Anton Palace in Valletta (Malta), the Palacio Nacional de Ájuda in Lisbon, Teatro 1793 at Villa Adlrovandi Mazzacorati in Italy, the Atheneums of Madrid and Barcelona and at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg. Her recital of “Songs of post Civil War Spain” at the Fundación Juan March of Madrid was broadcast on Radio Television Española and hailed as “a tour de force” by the Spanish newspaper ABC. 

​Anna’s artistry has been recognized by the Liederkranz Foundation, The Gerda Lissner Foundation, National Opera Association, Opera at Florham/Violeta Dupont Vocal Competition, and a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in and perform Spanish Art Song in Spain, where she has established a thriving career. Commercial recordings that have preserved some of these efforts include “The songs of Julio Gómez” with disc label VERSO and “España alla Rossini” which premiered in April of 2016 with iTinerant Classics. 

In 2017 she bowed in the role of Laura Adorno in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” with the Brno State Opera in the Czech Republic. In 2018 she was heard in the roles of Clarina in Rossini’s “Il cambiale di Matrimonio” and of Sally in Barber’s “A Hand of Bridge” for Little Opera Zamora in Spain, a Zarzuela concert at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg (Germany), at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (NYC), The Americas Society (NYC) and in Bernstein’s “Songfest” for Maverick Concerts (NY). 

Her 2018 season includes diplomatic concerts in Lisbon and the Dominican Republic; in Rossini vocal recital in Italy for the Circolo Lirico di Bologna and Museo Glauco Lombardi in Parma as well as in Spain for the Museo del Romanticismo and the Festival de Navas del Marqués in collaboration Duo Savigni; a German lieder duet concert with baritone Alfredo García at Festival ASISA in Spain, as well as appearances at The Sembrich Opera Museum (NY). 

In the fall of 2019 she bowed in a concert with orchestra with Teatro Grattacielo in Manhattan under the baton of Israel Gursky; as La Roldán in the zarzuela “El barbero de Sevilla” with New Camerata Opera; and in a concert of opera and zarzuela for the Auditorio National de España in Madrid. 

​Upcoming appearances include: the role of Glaura in Jose Lidon’s “Glaura y Cariolano” for LittleOpera Zamora; chamber music concerts in New York, Madrid, Italy, Viena and Germany in the summer and fall of 2022. Her newest disc with pianist Mac McClure, “1915:  Trip to Granada” (Classical Kat) premieres in spring of 2022.