July, 2012: The 2011 Composer’s Commission “Homenatge” by Tania León debuted in New York City’s Carnegie Hall in November, 2011.  Professor León’s piece is intended as a response to Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002). Recently, Adam Kent performed the piece at the Dance Theatre of Harlem with choreography by Pedro Ruiz.  Adam Kent will also perform “Homenatge” this coming summer at the Burgos International Music Festival.

For more information about the Burgos International Music Festival, please visit the organization’s webpage.

29 February 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music is sponsoring a guest lecture-recital for the graduate seminar “Local and Global Perspectives in Spanish Music” at the CUNY Graduate Center.  The guest lecturers include concert pianist Adam Kent and guitarist José María Gallardo.  Both guests will discuss and perform music as a means to explore the evolution of Spanish music for keyboard and guitar.

Iberian Musical Traditions

12 February, 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music’s 2011 Composer’s Commission, “Homenatge” , a tribute to Xavier Montsalvatge for his centennial by Tania León will be performed at the 2012 Composers Now festival.  This festival is held throughout New York City by numerous organizations. Distinguished professor León has just been named artistic director of this prestigious festival. The Dance Theater of Harlem will perform “Homenatge” with pianist Adam Kent.

Music and dance featuring a performance of Homenatge by Tania Leon performed by Adam Kent with choreography by Pedro Ruiz

Feb. 12th, 3:00PM
Tickets:  $18.00 ($12.00 for children and seniors)

For more information: http://dancetheatreofharlem.org/

10 January, 2012: The recordings from the 20 October, 2011 concert “The Travels of Tirant Lo Blanch: Music and Chivalric Splendor” are available in the Audio Archive.  The concert was part of the series Music in Midtown at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Below is the concert’s program and more information about the Capella de Ministrers and Carles Magraner.

NY Tirant programa

2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music is participating in the celebration of the Centennial of Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2012), one of the most prominent composers from the Catalan music scene in the 20th century.  The year’s activities will be concerts, lectures, book releases, and exihibitions in different cities including but not limited to Barcelona, Madrid, and New York.

2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music proudly announces that Benet Casablancas has been chosen for the 2012 Composer’s Commission. In theme with the Tania León’s 2011 Composer’s Commission, his musical piece will celebrate the Centennial of Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2012), one of the most prominent figures in the Catalan music scene in the 20th century.

Additionally, this composition contributes to a series of activities dedicated to Xavier Montsalvatge that will take place in different cities, including but not limited to New York, Barcelona, and Madrid.

24 January 2012: A seminar with Prof. Evelyne Ender, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center, CUNY and James Melo, ERC’s musicologist and Senior Editor at RILM.

The encounter between the adolescent Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and the already celebrated poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was like a spark that ignited an explosion leading to the birth of modern poetry. In a span of only four years, from when he was 17 years old until he abandoned poetry at age 21, Rimbaud changed forever the nature of poetry. His love affair with Verlaine, a tragic and self-destructive relationship on both sides, will be examined in the context of poetic, literary, and musical developments in France in the late 19th century, particularly the culture of decadence and aestheticism. Debussy’s music, which by the composer’s own assessment was profoundly indebted to the aesthetics of Verlaine’s exceptionally musical poetry, will be discussed in relation to its own groundbreaking characteristics and its contribution to musical modernism.

5:30-7:30
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Skylight Room, 9th floor

FREE ADMISSION
For more information:
jmelo@gc.cuny.edu; 212-817-8606

Presented by the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, CUNY, and the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in connection with ERC’s series of theatrical concerts Portraits.

To find out more about ERC’s theatrical concerts, visit our website: www.romanticcentury.org

Evelyne Ender is currently Professor of French and of Comparative Literature at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also appointed in the Women’s Studies program. She is the author of Sexing the Mind: Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Hysteria (1995) and Architexts of Memory: Literature, Science, and Autobiography (2006 Winner of the Scaglione Prize in Comparative Literary Studies). From her training at the University of Geneva, where she obtained her doctorat ès lettres, she has retained a lasting interest in the connections between literature and a history of mentalities. She has published widely in French and in English in the areas of poetics, narrative, gender, and memory studies, and on such authors as Nerval, George Sand, Proust, H. James, and Woolf. She is working on two books: one on the art of reading and the meaning of literary studies for contemporary culture, and the other on changing paradigms of writing and issues of creativity. She spoke at the recent MLA on George Sand and Chopin – on music and text and issues of romantic aesthetics.

James Melo has written extensively for scholarly journals and music magazines in Brazil, Uruguay, Austria, and the United States, and has been invited to participate as a panel discussant in conferences in Indiana, New York, and Canada. He has written program notes for several concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and for over 60 recordings on the Chesky, Naxos, Paulus, and Musikus labels, among others. He is the New York correspondent for the magazine Sinfonica in Uruguay, reviewer of music iconography for the journal Music in Art, and senior editor at RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) at CUNY. In March 2005, he chaired a session in the conference Music’s Intellectual History, organized by the Barry Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation (CUNY), and presented a paper on the history of musicological research in Brazil. He received a grant from the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, where he conducted research on the manuscripts of Anton Webern. Mr. Melo is the program annotator for the recording of Villa-Lobos’s complete piano music and Camargo Guarnieri’s complete piano concertos on Naxos. He has written program notes for all of ERC’s original productions and authored several scripts. In 2006, Mr. Melo began collaborating with the Montréal Chamber Music Festival as musicologist and program notes writer. In March 2008 he chaired a session on music iconography in Brazil and Portugal in the conference Music, Body, and Stage: The Iconography of Music Theater and Opera at CUNY Graduate Center.

29 November, 2011: The Fundación Juan March in Madrid has updated its digital collection of Spanish music.  The catalogue includes a searchable archive of concerts, composers, performers, scores, and more.  For more information and to access this website, click here.

This information is also available in the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Web Library for Iberian Music.

8 December, 2011: For the anniversary of Tomás Luis de Victoria the Church of St. Luke in the Fields is hosting the concert “Christmas in Iberia.”  The evening features Victoria’s sublime Missa O magnum mysterium among other pieces by both Portuguese and Spanish composers.  Before the concert, Antoni Pizà director of the Foundation for Iberian Music will give a lecture about the program, focusing on the life and work of Victoria.

Christmas in Iberia

15 November, 2011:  Listen to the audio recordings of the book release and panel discussion for Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain by Susan Boynton.  The recording is available on the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Audio Archive.

The speakers in the recording include introductory remarks by Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie, moderated by director Antoni Pizà, and the discussion of the book with Susan Boynton, Walter Clark, Don Michael Randel, and Suzanne Ryan.