There are three upcoming conferences organized by or with the collaboration of the Brook Center and The Foundation for Iberian Music.

• New York, April 22-23, 2025: Music Migration, and the Exchange of Knowledge: Spain-North America-Latin America. See program here: MusicMigrationKnowlege.
• Valencia, Spain, September 25-26, 2025: See the following links.
• Oviedo, Spain, June 11-13, 2025: La música hispana en EE.UU. a través de la prensa: recepción, construcción y crítica/ Hispanic music in the USA through the press: reception, construction and criticism. See link below and click here for details: Oviedo

International Conference Music, Networks and Nationalism: Ideals of Identity in Epistolary Communication

XIII Congreso internacional de la Comisión de Música y Prensa / XIII International conference of the music and press commission

Ricard Viñes (1875-1943) is mostly known as the pianist of the French impressionists. He premiered works by Debussy Ravel, among many others. The Foundation for Iberian Music dedicated a lecture and symposium to him in 2010. You may listen to the event here

Now, the New York Philharmonic celebrates the 150 anniversary of Viñes’s friend, Maurice Ravel, which is also Viñes’s 150 anniversary. Click this link for more information. Philharmonic Events

David Geffen Hall has mounted a show at its lobby showing, among many other things Viñes’s Diary. This document, among other things, testifies to the authorship of Sémiramis, a Ravel composition premiered now by the Philharmonic that, for a long time, was considered spurious. Interestingly enough, CUNY professor Arbie Orenstein has determined Sémiramis’s authorship based on Viñes’s Diary. There will also be many more events around Viñes, Ravel, and Sémiramis at Albertine and The Morgan Library. Click this link, again, for more information. Philharmonic Events

Antoni Pizà’s The Way of the Moderns: Six Perspectives on Modernism in Music has recently been reviewed in several prestigious publications.

Una ópera aperta de la Modernidad_ The Way of the Moderns _ Múrcia i Cambra _ Itamar. Revista de investigación musical_ territorios para el arte

Intersections Review

NOTES Review

 

T h e  F o u n d a t i o n   f o r  I b e r i a n  M u s i c at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, The Office of Public Programs, CUNY Graduate Center, The Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, In Collaboration with Flamenco Festival New York

PRESENT

Federico García Lorca, Flamenco, and the Harlem Renaissance
An International Symposium
Wed, Mar 5 5:30-6:30pm  – Skylight Room
CUNY Graduate Center – 365 5th Avenue at 34th St
Free; reservations required – gc.cuny.edu/public-programs

Before our evening concert with Kiki Morente and Carlos de Jacoba, join Sybil Cooksey, José Javier León, Noël Valis, and moderator K. Meira Goldberg for a free panel discussion about Lorca’s legacy, almost 90 years after his assassination during the Spanish Civil War. A queer poet who drew inspiration from (and continues to inspire) flamenco, rooted in Gitano (Kalé, Spanish Roma, or so-called “Gypsy”) culture, Lorca was also deeply impacted by the Black artists he encountered during his stay in New York at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Still influential today is Lorca’s concept of duende, a dark and mysterious aesthetic power, which expresses a kind of tragic ecstasy for singer, dancer, and audience.

Featuring: Sybil Cooksey, assistant professor at New York University and author of the forthcoming book, The Objective I: Black Life Writing and Inauthenticity in Post-Negrophilia Paris; K. Meira Goldberg, scholar-in-residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music, a flamenco performer and choreographer, and author of the award-winning monograph, Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco; José Javier León, a professor at Centro de Lenguas Modernas de la Universidad de Granada and author of numerous books related to Lorca, including Finding Duende: Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion; and Noël Valis, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University and author of the award-winning book, Lorca After Life.

T h e  F o u n d a t i o n   f o r  I b e r i a n  M u s i c at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, The Office of Public Programs, CUNY Graduate Center, The Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, In Collaboration with Flamenco Festival New York

PRESENT

LORQUIANOS

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 – 7:00 pm – Elebash Recital Hall

Kiki Morente and Carlos de Jacoba, two of the most captivating figures in contemporary flamenco, come together to honor the legacy of Federico García Lorca. Kiki Morente, son of the legendary Enrique Morente, carries the profound poetic essence of Lorca in his voice, weaving the words of the great poet into the deep-rooted traditions of flamenco. Carlos de Jacoba, a master guitarist known for his innovative style, complements this journey, blending Lorca’s timeless influence with the expressive power of flamenco guitar. Together, they create a dialogue between flamenco’s rich heritage and the lyrical soul of Lorca, paying homage to the poet’s enduring impact on Spanish culture.

This concert will be preceded by an international symposium on Lorca, Flamenco, and the Harlem Renaissance.

Presented with Flamenco Festival New York; the Foundation for Iberian Music; the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies; the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures; and the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies.

Sonia Megías has been awarded the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Composer’s Commission 2025. Born in Almansa, Spain, in 1982, composer, singer, and multidisciplinary artist, Megías’s works investigate arts through musical notation, which she calls rare scores, and which manifest themselves through video, choreography, and visual arts. They include skirt-scores, edible scores, video-scores, tactile scores, graphic scores, cartographies… She has shown these scores in exhibitions called Mono+Graphics. Her projects aim at social transformation through playfulness and ritual.

She has obtained many awards including public the Sonia Megías Classroom (Alicante, 2018), the Sonia Megías Library (Granada, 2022), Ambassador of the Festival ‘Una mirada diferente’ (Centro Dramático Nacional, 2018), or Resident Composer of the Choral Federation of Madrid (2017-2020). Recently, both the National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Spanish Agency for Cooperation and International Development (AECID) have published documentaries and books about her work.

She has also received numerous commissions from Ministry of Culture of Spain and artistic awards and grants such as the Fulbright Grant (New York, 2010-2012), with which I completed a Master’s degree in Music Composition at New York University. In 2011 I created the publishing house EdicionesDelantal and the experimental laboratory CoroDelantal, currently based in Madrid and at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (MACA).

Miquel À. Múrcia (Ontinyent, Valencia 1982) has been awarded the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Composer’s Commission 2024. His Obra per a piano finds inspiration in the immigration from Valencia, Spain, to New York, in the early twentieth century. He discusses his sources in the following magazine article.

Miquel Àngel Murcia, el valenciano que ha ‘emigrado’ a Nueva York a través de la música _ Valencia Plaza

Miquel Àngel Múrcia’s background includes a a PhD in History. Considered a “great exponent of the electroacoustic in Europe” thanks to his enormous and incipient electroacoustic music, audiovisual, chamber music, and ensemble premieres in recent years in several European countries. He has received commissions from many countries and, among his many works premiered the most outstanding are the ones for the “Magritte Museum” in Belgium during the period 2009–2010. He has also premiered at many leading festivals, such as the SIMA FountCourt (France, Dijon), in 2011 and at the “Talent Festival” part of the prestigious Berlinale (Berlin). He has actively taken part in the 17th, 18th and 19th (2010-2012) “Meeting Point International Festivals” and his music has been included in the regular program of Phonos Barcelona, and Carnegie Ensemble Contemporary (USA 2012). Moreover, he is working to reissue a critical study of the romantic musical composer Josep Melcior Gomis. He is part of the Spanish Association of Electronic Music.

During the Spring semester 2025, Pilar Serrano Betored will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Foundation for Iberian Music / Barry S. Brook Center. Dr. Serrano’s research focuses on women guitarists’ role in flamenco in Spain and the Americas.

The working title of her research is “Women Guitarists: Towards A New Gender Identity in Contemporary Flamenco Guitar.” She hopes to analyze the musical practice of flamenco guitar by women in the contemporary American and Spanish music scene from the critical perspective of gender studies. Moreover, she will conduct fieldwork on women flamenco guitarists currently active in NYC and the USA. She intends to study from a theoretical and musicological perspective the transatlantic circulation of flamenco music, its ideologies, and instrumental practices between Spain and the Americas, drawing on the existing literature on current music and gender. To this end she will conduct structured interviews with female flamenco guitarists who have developed a professional career in the American and Spanish context, covering their training, professional trajectory, and musical practices from the point of view of gender. She will also compile sound recordings of the guitar practices of these performers and will elaborate a selection of flamenco guitar musical scores composed by these performers intended for edition and publication. This will aim to create a repertoire of flamenco guitar music composed entirely of women.

Workshop: Brazilian Music Approach: Rhythms and Analysis
NOVEMBER 5, 2024 3:00-9:00 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL, GRADUATE CENTER CUNY

Led by pianist, composer, arranger, music producer and educator Flávio Silva, the goal of this workshop is to introduce listeners and performers to principle Brazilian rhythms and styles associated with them, as well as an exploration of groups, composers and musicians.

Silva is a pianist, composer, arranger, music producer and educator. The goal of this workshop is to introduce listeners and performers to principle Brazilian rhythms and styles associated with them, as well as an exploration of groups, composers and musicians who were important for the consolidation of each of those rhythms. The workshop will be followed by a concert.

Topics:
The concepts of time signature (2/4 vs 4/4).
Clave.
Rhythmic timeline.
Brazilian music characteristics.
Most common Brazilian rhythms figures.
Syncopation in the Brazilian music genre.
Most common patterns played in a specific genre or style.

Rhythms covered:
-Samba
-Sambolero – João Donato
Samba-Jazz
-Bossa Nova
-Partido Alto

Personal experience of each of the trio members:
-Flávio Silva (Piano)
-Tiago Rosback (Drums)
-Daniel Castro (Double/Electric Bass) See less