New York Andalus Ensemble Video and Hunter College Presentation New York Andalus Ensemble, one of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s ensembles in residence, has a free public performance and lecture, “Arab Inter-culturality in al-Andalus,” upcoming at NYC’s Hunter College on April 1st. Read more in their latest news letter; for time and venue information, please get in touch with info@asefamusic.com. They also recently completed a successful west coast tour. You can watch some of their sold-out concert at Kuumba’s Santa Cruz on their YouTube channel below. Stay tuned for their annual spring concert with the large ensemble, to be scheduled in May, and help keep NYAE’s music and intercultural outreach going with a tax-deductible donation. The Foundation for Iberian Music is a non-profit educational organization supported entirely by grants and private donations.
Upcoming Talks Moderated by the GC’s Daniel Valtueña As a part of Flamenco Festival NYC, Graduate Center PhD student Daniel Valtueña will be moderating a series of talks called “RADICAL FLAMENCO” at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I Center. March 12 at 6:30, he will host “Radical Flamenco: A Conversation with Israel Galván,” ahead of Galván’s performance at NYU’s Skirball Center on March 13. NYU has canceled all events through March 29 owing to COVID-19 concerns. Please check back for updates on the remaining talk. Next, March 26 at 6:30, he will host a conversation with Rocio Molina, who will perform at City Center the following day. Lastly, on April 3 at 7:30, he will talk with flamenco collective Los Voluble, about their current project “Flamenco is Not a Crime.” Los Voluble will perform at Joe’s Pub on April 4. Each of these talks is free and open to the public, and will be presented en español. Receptions to follow. For more information about the performers, click the links above. Valtueña produced last year’s Niño de Elche residency at the GC’s James Gallery, in conjunction with the Foundation for Iberian Music, and he will also be chairing a panel on March 27 at our upcoming conference, Flamenco in the USA: From the Modernist Vanguard to the 21st Century. Join us in celebrating a month of progressive flamenco!
Flamenco in the U.S. Conference: Registration and Film Screenings Registration is now open for our upcoming conference Flamenco in the US: From the Modernist Vanguard through the 21st Century, and we have added a pair of documentary films to cap off the proceedings. Please note that they are in separate locations at the Graduate Center and have separate registration. Admission to both is free. Conference registration is available here. And you can reserve a seat for the film screenings here. Following the last presentation of the conference, we will screen one feature-length documentary and one documentary short. First we have FlameNYCo, directed by Javier Benítez (45 minutes). This documentary, filmed in 2010 to celebrate the Flamenco Festival’s 10th anniversary, features the illustrious artists performing in the Festival that year: Estrella Morente, Farruquito, Eva Yerbabuena, alongside New York flamenco legends such as the late maestro José Molina. There will be a short audience Q & A with the Flamenco Festival NY director, Miguel Marín. Second is Ode to Fazil’s directed by Marcel Rosa Salas (17 minutes). On 8th Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets in Manhattan, in the heart of Broadway, a worn-down tenement building was once home to Fazil’s Studio, a legendary dance rehearsal space. Many of the world’s great companies, along with up-and-comers, worked and sweated through their choreography in its halls. The film’s director, Marcel Rosa-Salas, the daughter of a flamenco dancer, once considered it a second home. Ode to Fazil’s is a touching tribute to an iconic monument of New York City dance. Following the film, there will be a short audience Q & A the film’s director and artists featured in the film, Rosa, Najma Harissiadis, Raymond “Spex” Abbiw, Fazil’s sister Serpil, Victorio Korjhan, and Arturo Martínez “Espíritu Gitano.” The films will follow the symposium at 5:00, on the C level. Stick around after the screenings to see Songs of Light: Rocío Márquez Featuring Miguel Ángel Cortés, who will be performing in the Elebash Auditorium at 7:00! (This concert is a part of Flamenco Festival NY; admission is $30, but a limited number of free tickets are available to the GC community. For details, see the event page linked above.)
CFP: Performance Practice and Sound Production at the Core of Medieval Music Research Medieval Music Besalú is continuing their new tradition of holding a conference on medieval performance practice and research to open their annual performance workshops, which now has two sessions at different campuses: one in Besalú and another in Lleida, called International Medieval Meeting Lleida. The conference will be held at the University of Lleida in Spain, 29 June to 1 July 2020. Papers may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Catalan. Submissions are due by 29 March 2020. You can download a PDF of the call for papers here, or view below: Musicology at IMML 2020 Call for papers Performance Practice and Sound Production at the Core of Medieval Music Research The study of medieval music has a long and established tradition in the field of musicology. Most of the work conducted through the years focuses on the study of manuscripts, repertoires, genres, poetic and musical forms, and composers. Yet, performance practice and sound production are still insufficiently studied at large and even seen with some apprehension. This seems rather incongruous since medievalmusic with all its compositional elements, its registers, and its preservation in written form was above all conceived as an experience for the ear. The act of performance made this possible, and in that evanescent moment the sacred and secular repertoires of medieval music were articulated and directly disseminated. Thus, performance and sound should undoubtedly be placed at the center of medieval music research since its own foundation and essence are directly connected to them. Fortunately, this realization is encouraging not only more and more musicologists, but also philologists, archeologists, anthropologists, and performers to conduct research on these subjects. Since the information that has survived is fragmentary at best, these researchers have to resort to new interdisciplinary methods that combine traditional positivist musicology with music semiology, musical iconography, performance theories, empirical musicology, musical and experimental archeology, ethnoarcheology, acoustics, and the study of surviving musical instruments. Following the success of the strand on medieval musicology at the International Medieval Meeting Lleida 2019, in 2020 we are presenting a second edition dedicated to medieval music performance and sound production. This strand will be conducted at the: 10th International Medieval Meeting Lleida 2020, (University of Lleida, Catalonia, 29-30 of June and 1 of July 2020). Potential topic areas might include, but are not limited to:• Manuscripts and their performance indications• Notation and performance• Performance context and space• Sound production in sacred and secular spaces• Usage of musical instruments• Musical instruments and their playing techniques• Musical instruments and sound production• Audience participation• Music and sound perception in medieval theory and practice• Iconography and performance• Experimental archeology, ethnoarcheology, and performance• Voice production and song performance• Gesticulation, rhetoric, and music delivery Keynote speaker: Elizabeth Eva Leach (University of Oxford) ProposalsWe invite researchers at all career stages to send abstracts of up to 250 words for 20-minute papers (in English, Spanish, or Catalan), along with a current CV. Abstracts and CVs should be submitted by 29 March 2020 to:Màrius Bernadó (marius.bernado@hahs.udl.cat)Mauricio Molina (maurus4@gmail.com) Notification of acceptance will be sent via email around 10 April 2020. Selected papers will be considered for publication in a new series dedicated to medieval music research sponsored by the University of Lleida. For more information about the 10th International Medieval Meeting Lleida 2020, visit:http://www.internationalmedievalmeetinglleida.udl.cat
“Ushaq:” Love Efflorescent. NY Andalus Ensemble Fall Concert The New York Andalus Ensemble‘s seasonal concert with the full ensemble is rapidly approaching! The theme of this year’s fall concert is Ushaq, Love Efflorescent. It will be held at La Nacional, December 11 at 7:30 pm. Tickets ($22 / $16 student & senior) are available through the NYAE website. Join us for a celebration of unity through music and song from al-Andalus and North Africa. A smaller ensemble will also be making a rare west coast appearance in January! Director Samuel Torjman Thomas (oud/vocals/saxophone/nay), Salah Rhani (violin), and Dror Sinai (percussion) will perform at Kuumba’s in Santa Cruz, CA on January 9, 2020, in a special event sponsored by the Humanities Institute at UCSC. Tickets ($26.25 advance) are available directly from Kuumba’s. New York Andalus Ensemble 7:30 pm 11 December 2019 La Nacional 239 W. 14th St NY, NY Asefa Trio 7:00 pm 9 January 2020 Kuumba’s Jazz 320-2 Cedar St. Santa Cruz, CA
Pop Music Before The Pop Era: Spanish Music in the US Recording Industry (1896-1914) Kiko Mora (University of Alicante), a previous scholar in residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music, recently published the findings of a research project on the foundations of the Latin music recording industry in the US. (This project was supported by grants from CIOFF/INAEM [International Council of Folklore and Traditional Arts Organizations / Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas /Ministerio de Cultura].) For the early music industry, New York City was the center of the world. On March 26, Mora will be at the Graduate Center to present this research. Due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, this event has been canceled. The book is called De Cera y goma-laca: La producción de música española en la industria fonográfica estadounidense (1896-1914) (Spain: INAEM, 2018). (Wax and shellac: The Production of Spanish music in the United States phonograph industry [1896-1914].) De cera y goma-laca is a quantitative and historiographic study of Spanish music produced during the early years of two record companies, the Columbia Phonograph Company and Thomas Edison’s National Phonograph Company. Mora writes, “The year of 1896 marked a turning point, closing a cycle in the production of recorded music at a commercial scale, and opening another where, after the conquest of public space, the phonograph and its music cylinders begun to colonize more and more homes in a wide spectrum of music consumers.” In De cera y goma-laca, Mora analyzes the NPC and CPC’s recording production, mainly with regards to the Spanish music titles, performers and composers. This production covers a period of time where music of European origin had a remarkable presence in the companies’ catalogs, under the sections called “Foreign records,” “Ethnic Records” and “Opera records”—a presence which was severely diminished with the outbreak of the First World War. In comparative terms, Spanish immigrants living in the US hardly exceeded 22,000 during this period, but their music was widely represented in recording industry repertory. What was the ratio of production of music related to Spain? What was the status of the Spanish music in the US and Latin-American markets? What was the perception of this music for the US audience ? What were the most prolific years and cities of production? What genres were most recorded and sold? How can these ratios be explained? Who were the most recurring composers and performers? Why? This lecture aims to answer these questions. (You can read a full review of the book here; it is available for purchase from Deflamenco.) 7:00 pm 26 March 2020 Room C198 The Graduate Center Mora is a longtime collaborator with the Foundation for Iberian Music and he has published numerous articles and books on Spanish and Latin American popular music and film music. He is among the speakers invited to give papers at our conference Flamenco in the United States on the day after his book presentation, March 27. Registration for the conference is free; please join us in the Graduate Center’s Skylight room! (Visit the conference page linked above for full details.)
Responses in Music to Climate Change: Call for Papers (deadline 10 February 2020) The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York announces the multidisciplinary international conference Responses in Music to Climate Change to be held at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, 21–23 April 2020. The deleterious effects of anthropogenic climate change continue to shape music making in a post-industrial, global society. Indigenous communities—those typically least responsible for the carbon emissions that have contributed to global warming—face the elimination or depletion of natural resources necessary for their musical practices and traditions. Composers of art music, many compelled to bear witness to our current times and bring awareness to threatened ecosystems, draw sound material from endangered environmental sources. Popular music, too, continues to respond through concerts, songs that thematize the environment, and celebrity endorsements for protection measures. Across all forms of music making, discourses of preservation, sustainability, visibility, and action are pervasive. With the aim of collecting and sharing research on music’s place within the context of anthropogenic climate change, this conference welcomes contributions from a broad range of disciplines. A multidisciplinary approach not only seeks to capitalize on the wide range of ontological frameworks that each field brings, but also foregrounds the necessity for clear communication and criticism within and between disciplines. Increasingly, studies that address climate change and notions of environment point to the limitations of common categories for sound and music. As the problem is a human one, we hope to tackle the perennial question of how to develop vocabularies that transcend the boundaries of specialized jargon. Simply put, to confront a shared problem, we must develop strategies and techniques that address its complexities in a language accessible to all. A precondition for inciting and facilitating action is the widespread comprehension of the stakes, difficulties, and necessities as a global community. We are excited to have Dr. Ana María Ochoa Gautier, Department of Music/Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University, as our keynote speaker. We seek to inspire papers and panels on the following themes: Music and acoustic ecology Environmental sound sources in composition The sounds of endangered lands Sustainability Perspectives on sonic environments Music and globalization/industrialization Sonic ecologies Politics Sound studies Please submit a proposal, with title and an abstract of no more than 300 words, and include contact information (address, phone, and email). Proposals for papers, whole panels, posters, and lecture-recitals are welcome. Proposals may be submitted before 10 February 2020 to: Michael Lupo The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation The City University of New York, The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10016-4309 mlupo@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Prohens and Riera Radio Appearance Composer Josep Prohens and pianist Andreu Riera appeared on Radio IB3 program La Ruta D’Orfeu on October 28 to discuss their upcoming retrospective event here at the Graduate Center, as well as their new album, Ficció. The program should be available soon on La Ruta D’Orfeu’s page, but for now, you may listen to the broadcast (in Catalan) below: https://brookcenter.gc.cuny.edu/files/2019/10/AUDIO-2019-10-28-08-49-35.mp3 Also be sure to give Ficció a listen, and of course, join us on November 12 for a free concert of many of the works on the album!
Piano Masterclass with Josep Prohens: Time and Location As previously announced, we are holding a masterclass in conjunction with our upcoming Josep Prohens retrospective concert, with the composer himself and pianist Andreu Riera, who is one of the foremost interpreters of Prohens’ piano works. The masterclass will be held the day before the concert, November 11, at 12:30, at City College’s Shepard Hall. This class is free and open to the public; no registration is required to observe. Until then, enjoy the album whose launch we’re celebrating with this concert and masterclass: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k93SpxfcYUMGDcsNQhS0eWfm2qjHLkgvc[/youtube]