8 May 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music proudly announces its new artist-in-residence, Perspectives Ensemble.  Founded in 1993 by Artistic Director Sato Moughalian, Perspectives Ensemble historically and culturally contextualizes the works of composers in its performance events.  The Foundation has collaborated with Perspectives Ensemble recently and looks forward to continuing its musical and productive relationship with Sato Moughalian and the ensemble.

In the Fall the Perspectives Ensemble will perform Benet Casablancas’ new work that is part of the  Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2012) Centennial celebration.  The concert will be at the Morgan Library on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 7:30 pm.

More information to follow.

8 May 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music is co-sponsoring the Summer immersion course 1st International Course on Medieval Music Performance (12th-14th c.) with Professor Mauricio Molina, recipient of the Higini Anglès Dissertation Award (2006) and a graduate of the Program in Music at the City University of New York, the Graduate Center.  During the week of July 9-14, Dr. Molina will be leading a group class “Theory and Performance of Medieval Music” and instrument lessons “Medieval Frame Drums and Percussion (tambourine, square frame drum, tariya).”

The course descriptions:

Theory and Performance of Medieval Music

“In this class we will conduct a global study of different historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the music of composed between 1100 and 1300. This will be done though the analysis of different historical sources, and modern musicological studies. The elements under consideration will be: sources, notation, solmization, modal theory, social development of the different repertoires, compositional techniques, and musical analysis.”

Medieval Frame Drums and Percussion (tambourine, square frame drum, tariya)

• Reconstruction of performance techniques based on both the study of medieval iconographical and literary sources, and the observation of appropriate oral traditions.
• Development of a rhythmic accompaniment following different rhythmic theories of the period (Christian and Arabic treatises), analysis of the repertoires, and the description of percussionists in medieval literature.
• Reconstruction of the sound aesthetic based on the physical and functional context of medieval percussion.

17 May 2012: The NYC Andalus Ensemble, sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music, is performing a free concert at the CUNY Graduate Center‘s Elebash Recital Hall.  The ensemble is coordinated by Samuel R. Thomas (Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center) and directed by Rachid Halihal.

Free and open to the public

23 April 2012: A seminar with Prof. Julia Trubikhina, Substitute Associate Professor of Russian in the Department of Classics and Oriental Studies and Acting Head of the

Division of Russian and Slavic Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, and James Melo, musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and
Senior Editor at RILM.

The seminar will examine the troubled relationship between artistic creation and totalitarianism through the perspective of the lives and careers of two emblematic artists working in Stalinist Russia: the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Akhmatova’s status as an icon of Russia culture will be discussed in light of a flourish of recent popular biographies that attempt to rework the past and challenge the cult of personality in Russian art. Shostakovich’s career as a composer who worked under the auspices of the regime provides another angle on the relationship between art and politics, as an illustration of the power of music to convey political ideology.

Monday, April 23

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

Julia Trubikhina received her PhD in Comparative Literature with a specialization in Slavic studies from New York University. Until Fall 2008 she taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University where she also coordinated the Russian Program. Since 2009, Julia Trubikhina teaches in the Department of Classics and Oriental Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, where she is currently Acting Head of the Division of Russian and Slavic Studies. Julia’s book The Translator’s Doubts: Vladimir Nabokov and the Ambiguity of Translation is coming out this year at Academic Studies Press. She has two other book projects in progress. In addition to articles and reviews in academic journals, Julia Trubikhina also published translations and contributed original poetry to Russian, European, and American anthologies and literary journals.

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, and senior editor at RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) at CUNY. 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.

4-5 May 2012: Perspective:Xenakis is the first biannual festival focusing on the work of one innovative 20th or 21st century composer.  Conscious aims of the festival include representing the totality of a composer’s output as well as bringing both committed and acclaimed interpreters of the chosen composer’s music to Austin.  This festival intends to fill a niche in the already spectacular cultural milieu of Texas’s capital.

On Friday evening, Meehan/Perkins Duo, North America’s foremost percussion duo, joins Austin’s own line upon line percussion and Timothy Briones in performances of Xenakis’s two massive percussion sextets. On Saturday afternoon, Austin’s Michelle Schumann (piano) and Steve Parker (trombone) as well as Mike Zell (percussion) will play some of the most virtuosic music ever written for their instruments. The festival concludes on Saturday evening with JACK Quartet performing the complete Xenakis string quartets, their performances of which have been hailed by Alex Ross of The New Yorker as “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh.”

Each concert will be preceded by a viewing of the 50 minute BBC documentary, Something Rich and Strange: The Life and Music of Iannis Xenakis. A brief post-concert talkback with the artists and two preeminent Xenakis scholars, Nouritza Matossian and Benoît Gibson, will follow each performance.

For more information, please visit the Festival website: http://lineuponlinepercussion.org/perspectivexenakis

26 April, 2012:  Missa Ecce terra motus (Earthquake Mass) is an expansive composition with 12 independent vocal parts by Antoine Brumel.  On Thursday, April 26, Antoni Pizà will give a pre-concert lecture about the mass and its historical context.  The concert and lecture is hosted by the Church of St. Luke of the Fields and the mass is performed by the Choir of St. Luke in the Fields.

Earthquake Mass

Tickets are $35, $25 for students and seniors.  For more information and tickets, visit the event website here.

23 March, 2012: The American Musical Instrument Society just awarded the 2010 Nicholas Besseraboff Prize to the book Frame Drums in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2010) by early music performer and scholar Mauricio Molina. The award recognizes a distinguished book-length work in English that best furthers the AMIS’ goal to promote the study of the history, design, and use of musical instruments in all cultures and from all periods.

The Foundation for Iberian Music previously awarded the Higini Anglès Dissertation Award in 2006 to Molina’s study. Its publication was also made possible by a grant from the Foundation.

18 March, 2012: IB3 Radio interviews Director Antoni Pizà on the recordings of Alan Lomax in Spain.  All of the Alan Lomax recordings have been restored, digitized, and cataloged, and his life’s work is now available online on the website of the Association for Cultural Equity.  The radio segment is available on the Audio Archive.

Click below to listen to the program.

9 March, 2012: The Foundation for Iberian Music’s Audio Archive has recently been updated with recordings from past music events that have not been previously digitized for website access.  The recordings that are now available are The Remarkable Journey of J.B. Sancho: Pioneer Composer of California (April 30, 2007), Composers’ Discoveries: The Songs of Antoni Parera Fons (February 14, 2007), and New Music by Román Alís and Salvador Brotons (May 3, 2007).

Additional information about each of these events is available in the Past Events Archive.

18 April 2012: 21st-Century Music in Society is a series of talks and debates by major cultural figures addressing the changing consumption, creation, context, and valuations of music in modern society. The inaugural lecture and performance, “The Challenges of Modernist Music”, will be given by Charles Rosen. It will be followed by a conversation with Daniel J. Wakin of the Culture Department, The New York Times. The event will take place at Elebash Recital Hall of the Graduate Center of The City University of New York on 18 April 2012, 6:30 pm. Admission free, reservations required at https://community.gc.cuny.edu/challenges_of_modernist_music.
Call 212-817-8215 for further information.

Charles Rosen is a celebrated pianist and writer upon whom President Barack Obama conferred the National Humanities Medal in early 2012. Rosen is the author of the acclaimed The Classical Style, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and a passionate advocate of new music. He will assess the impact of contemporary music in the 21st century, exploring issues such as the role of public and private institutions, the responsibility of education in keeping the arts alive, the divide between commercial popular music and the concert experience, and the challenges of art’s accessibility from the 18th century until today.