El Greco in New York The Foundation is co-sponsoring a concert with the Metropolitan Museum to commemorate the 400th anniversary of El Greco’s death. Renowned early music ensemble Capella de Ministrers will present a program from their release “El Greco, El Viaje Musical,” which celebrates music iconic to the important places in El Greco’s life. The concert will be held in the Museum’s 16th century patio from the Andalusian castle, Vélez Blanco. This intimate venue mirrors the palatial residences of El Greco in Rome and Toledo, where generous patronage allowed the artist to enjoy salaried musicians nightly at his dinners. The concert coincides with the Museum’s forthcoming exhibit “El Greco in New York,” which opened last week. There will be two performances: Dec 12, 7 pm Dec 13, 7 pm Tickets are $85 and extremely limited. (Please contact the Met Box Office at 212-570-3949 to reserve.) The Foundation will have a limited number of complimentary tickets available to students and faculty. Please contact Antoni Piza for availability. Click photo to hear the Capella’s album trailer
Reminder: “Passion and Playfulness,” upcoming lecture-recital with pianist Joseph Smith MONDAY! October 27! 11 am! Join us at City College (Shephard Hall, Rm. 95) for an informative morning of wonderful Latin piano music. Pianist Joseph Smith will be doing a lecture-recital on the links between Western classical and vernacular Latin-American traditions, such as tango and milonga. For a preview, check out this excerpt from a lecture Mr. Smith did years ago, featuring a performance of “Te quiero tanto,” which he will be playing at next week’s program. Program: Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905) ¡Te quiero tanto! (I love you so much!) ¡Pst! La celosa (The jealous woman) Juan Morel Campos (1857-1896) ¡No me toques! (Don’t touch me!) ¡Si te toco! (Yes, I touch you!) Alberto Williams (1862-1952) Nostalgia de la Pampa (Nostalgia for the Pampa) Requiebro a las caderas (Admiring her hips) Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934) Pierrot Manuel María Ponce (1882-1948) Malgré tout (Despite all) The event is free and open to the public. No reservation is required. City College of New York Shephard Hall Room 95 160 Convent Ave New York, NY 10031
Upcoming NY Andalus Ensemble Concert The NY Andalus Ensemble, one of the official ensembles sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music, will be performing at the Graduate Center’s Elebash Theater at the end of the month. The NYAE celebrates the historical diversity of the Iberian Peninsula through its traditional music and modern compositions with roots in these traditions. Please join us October 30th at 7:30 for an evening of music from al-Andalus! Tickets are $13, $10 for students. They are available online through Ticketweb or directly from the Foundation for Iberian Music office. (Please call ahead at (212) 817-1819 to confirm that we are in the office. The office will be closed for the week of October 13.)
Composer’s Commission concert next week, new publications Our 2013 Composer’s Commission concert is rapidly approaching, and we have some good news! Firstly: Please join us next week, September 8th, for the premiere of Albert Guinovart’s exciting new piano work, Skyshadows. The concert will be held at the Instituto Cervantes at 7 pm. Tickets are $15 to the public ($10 ICNY members). They are available online, by phone (212-308-7720), or may be purchased in person at the institute until 6:30 pm the day of the concert, so be sure to plan ahead! For Skyshadows, Guinovart drew inspiration from the ever shifting landscape of shadows cast by the buildings of NYC, creating a light, tuneful work that begins with a nod to Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York.” With his program of old and new Catalonian works, Guinovart continues a century-long musical dialog between Iberia and New York. Today’s issue of El Diario featured an article on Guinovart and our Composer’s Commission series, so be sure to check it out. Lastly–because, who can get enough of seeing their name in print?–we would like to offer a sneak preview of the work, which is soon to be published by international powerhouse Music Sales. Further information to come.
Lecture-Recital with Pianist Joseph Smith The Fall semester is nearly upon us! Coming up September 8th is the not-to-be-missed premiere of the Foundation’s 2013 Composer Commission with Albert Guinovart, but this is only the beginning of a year of great programming. Please join us on October 27th for a lecture-recital with pianist Joseph Smith. Mr. Smith is known for bringing neglected works to light. He regularly performs, writes, and lectures. He has edited eleven piano anthologies, recorded ten albums, and written for numerous publications. His show “Joseph Smith’s Piano Bench” aired for two years, as a monthly feature of NPR’s Performance Today. The New York Times has called his playing “eloquent,” and author Stuart Issacoff calls him “a walking encyclopedia of the piano” in his book, The Natural History of the Piano. For this lecture, Mr. Smith will be performing piano works of Latin-America and exploring the links between Western classical and vernacular Latin-American traditions, such as tango and milonga. As an apertif, please enjoy this video of Mr. Smith performing Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat, Op. 9, No. 2 (“with too many authentic ornaments”), and this excerpt from a previous lecture-recital, featuring “Te quiero tanto,” which he will be performing on the upcoming program. The lecture will take place on October 27, 2014 at CCNY, 11 am. The event is free to attend. No reservation required. City College of New York Shephard Hall Room 95 160 Convent Ave New York, NY 10031
Composer’s Commission 2013 July 8, 2014: The Foundation is excited to announce that the 2013 composer’s commission has been awarded to Albert Guinovart. A Catalan pianist and composer, Guinovart studied at the Municipal Conservatory of Barcelona. He is currently teaching composition at ESMUC (Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya), a position he has held since 2002. In 2014, he was inducted into the Catalan Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Guinovart’s music has been performed around the world and has been featured in several films. He recently released a recording of his works on Sony Classical (link in Spanish). Please join us at the Instituto Cervantes on September 8 for the premiere of Guinovart’s new work, Skyshadows. The program, which explores creative exchanges between Spain and New York City, will include several of Guinovart’s past works along with the works of Frederic Mompou and Enrique Granados. The commission will also be performed at the Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond (VA) on September 10.
Granados Centenary Performance A major highlight of the Granados Centenary celebrations will be the performance in New York of the long-lost masterpiece Cant de les estrelles (Song of the Stars) by Voices of Ascension, directed by Dennis Keene, with pianist Douglas Riva. Cant de les estrelles was premiered by the Orfeó Català, Barcelona in March, 1911 and the work was repeated in a private concert in June of that year. Although recognized as a masterpiece it was never again performed and the manuscript was though lost until it was recovered in 2006. Dennis Keene directed Voices of Ascension in the first performance in almost 100 years in 2007 with pianist Douglas Riva, the first pianist to perform the work after Granados himself. The concert was recorded by Naxos and the CD was nominated for a Grammy award.
The Global Reach of the Fandango The Foundation for Iberian Music at The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the CUNY Graduate Center will host a conference on the global reach of the fandango at CUNY’s Segal Theater, April 17–18, 2015. (Saturday papers will be held at Alegrias at La Nacional, 239 W. 14th St, between 7th and 8th Aves.) Read the Global Reach of the Fandango program In The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization, Serge Gruzinski notes “the difficulty we experience even ‘seeing’ mestizo phenomena, much less analyzing them.” The fandango emerged in the early eighteenth century as a popular dance and music craze across Spain and the Americas. While in parts of Latin America the term “fandango” came to refer to any festive social dance event, over the course of that century in both Spain and the Americas a broad family of interrelated fandango music and dance genres evolved that went on to constitute important parts of regional expressive culture. This fandango family comprised genres as diverse as the Cuban peasant punto, the salon and concert fandangos of Mozart and Scarlatti, and—last but not least—the Andalusian fandango subgenres that became core components of flamenco. The fandango world itself became a conduit for the creative interaction and syncretism of music, dance, and people of diverse Spanish, Afro-Latin, Gitano, and perhaps even Amerindian origin. As such, the fandango family evolved as a quintessential mestizaje, a mélange of people, imagery, music and dance from America, Europe, and Africa. Emerging from the maelstrom of the Atlantic slave trade with its cataclysmic remaking of the Western world, the fandango in its diverse but often interrelated forms was nurtured in the ports of Cádiz, Veracruz, Sao Paolo and Havana, and went on to proliferate throughout Europe and the Americas. Widely dispersed in terms of geography, class, and cultural reference, the fandango’s many faces reflect a diversity of exchange across what was once the Spanish Empire. This conference proposes to bring these cousins together, and to wonder how one form can shed light on another. The conference will take place in the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater. Registration Information 2 Day: $100 ($50 students) Single Day: $50 ($25 students) Please visit the link above for further details. If you are interested in volunteering, in exchange for waived registration fees, please contact Meira at fandangoconference.cuny@gmail.com. (*Title is with gratitude to “Unpaseo por la música y el baile populares de la Nueva España,” in Performance and Censorship in Colonial Mexico, Martha Toriz, ed., Hemispheric Institute Web Cuaderno [January 2005].)
Gross Indecency: Sexual Phobia and the Trial of Oscar Wilde A seminar with Richard A. Kaye Associate Professor of English at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center James Melo Musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and Senior Editor at RILM Abstracts of Music Literature Oscar Wilde’s multifaceted personality, his biting wit, and the brilliance of his artistic genius added sparkle and glamour to late Victorian society, making him the darling of England’s salons and artistic circles. But even his position as the most popular and admired playwright in the world could not save him from the wrath of society, as he stood accused of gross indecency under England’s law that criminalized homosexual behavior. Wilde’s personal life was brought into the glare of public scrutiny during his trial, when he was humiliated, degraded, exiled from society, and sentenced to two years of forced labor. The seminar will discuss Wilde’s artistic persona within the context of Victorian sexuality and the sexual phobias of the time, the rise of aestheticism in music and the arts, and the cultural underpinnings that made Wilde’s trial such a scandalous event worldwide. Monday, June 9, 2014 5:30-7:30 pm CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Martin Segal Theatre, 1st 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 theatrical concert, The Trial of Oscar Wilde at Symphony Space, June 19-21. To find out more about ERC’s theatrical concerts, visit our website: www.romanticcentury.org