On the Blackness of Flamenco With great pride and celebration we can announce that K. Meira Goldberg’s Sonidos Negros: On The Blackness of Flamenco (Oxford U. P., 2018) is coming out in Spanish, translated by Kiko Mora and published by Editorial Libargo. Dr. Goldberg is a researcher at the Foundation for Iberian Music and has co-edited with Antoni Pizà’s three collections of essays.
Sound Art, COVID, and the First Mediterranean Conference on Music and Science With COVID raging on both sides of the Atlantic, scholars and musicians are finding ways to continue their activities. ZOOM has become an indispensable tool for our work, whether in the classroom, the e-concert hall, or its use in professional conferences. Ferrer-Molina At the end of November 2020, organized by Fundació Assemblea de Ciutadans i Ciutadanes del Mediterrani (FACM), a group of scholars and artists in both music and the sciences gathered via Zoom to present their work under the aegis of the I Congrès Mediterrani Música I Ciència. One of the highlights of the conference was the intervention of Ferrer-Molina with a sound installation titled CONCIERTO PARA TRENES DE METRO Y BANDA, which includes an intervention in the Alameda train station in Valencia (Spain) for fifty-two players within the “natural” environment of train sounds. Ferrer-Molina has participated in many events at the Foundation for Iberian Music, including the 2017 Sound Art Festival with Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, Isaac Diego García and others. Miguel Álvarez-Fernández Álvarez-Fernández and Ferrer-Molina were also guests at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Composers Forum, to discuss their music. As described by Antoni Pizà, the curator of the event, their creative work inhabits the margins between experimental music and sound art. It explores conceptual art, performance, experimental video, and other possibilities for developing the audience’s relationship with sound. They engage with these questions involving intersections through concert pieces, sound installations, sculptures, curatorial projects and many other manifestations. Moving forward a different kind of musical experience, of special interest was the intervention of guitarist Mirza Redžepagić, which explored some similarities between Bosnian traditional music and flamenco. The two-day event is on two different posts on YouTube corresponding to the first and second sessions. Also, check out the web of the Fundació Assemblea de Ciutadans i Ciutadanes del Mediterrani (FACM). About the conference they state: “The Mediterranean Congress “Music and Science” aims to be an annual event that brings together different personalities of music and science in the Mediterranean area in order to share aspects that year after year have affected the interrelation between music and music. science. In its first edition, on November 27 and 28, 2020, in online format, the central theme of the Mediterranean Congress “Music and Science” is the use of ICT in the Covid scenario, while the pandemic situation has forced the science and music, disciplines that require intense teamwork, to transfer a large part from its work to the internet. Organized by the ACM Foundation in collaboration with Mostra Viva del Mediterrani and the ACM circle of Sarajevo.” In the end, nowadays it all seems to be circling back to COVID and its consequences.
Sonoridad.es | Sound Landscapes in the Iberian Peninsula Sonoridad.es | Sound Landscapes in the Iberian Peninsula La Señorita Blanco Curated by our colleague Daniel Valtueña, Sonoridad.es is a program of artistic residences accompanying the creative process of two artists: Isabel Do Diego [isabeldodiego.com] and La Señorita Blanco [lasenoritablanco.me] during the next two academic courses. Please read the complete information here [kjcc.org]. Isabel Do Diego On Thursday October 29 at 2:30 pm EST we’ll open the project with the round table Sonoridad.es: Listening to the Iberian Landscape [kjcc.org]which will be broadcast live through the KJCC [facebook.com] Facebook page,as well as from the Youtube channel [youtube.com]. Read full information here: Sonoridad.es 1029
A Night at the Movies with Conductor Ángel Gil-Ordoñez Ángel Gil-Ordoñez, who is the conductor of one of the Foundation’s resident ensembles, can easily be characterized in Spanish as a todoterreno, a four-wheel drive who succeeds in traversing the most remote and distant zones of the orchestral landscape. His collaborations with the Foundation have helped present in New York the music of Benet Casablancas, Xavier Montsalvatge, Carlos Surinach, Manuel de Falla, Robert Gerhard, Mauricio Sotelo, Óscar Esplá, Ernesto Halffter, and many more. His latest project includes a survey of the Bernard Herrmann, composer of many soundtracks for Hitchcock, as well as other notable film directors. You can hear Gi-Ordóñez’s performance and commentary here. The recording includes Herrmann’s world premiere recording of Whitman a radio drama on the famous American poet (words by Norman Corwin) and Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra mixing words and musical splashes of cinematic color and words. He has tackled the film repertoire in concert and recording in many occasions including Redes, with music by Silvestre Revueltas and cinematography by Paul Strand, and The City with music by Aaron Copland. His, so to speak, ecumenical tastes have also taken him to present Gamelan music and programs dedicated to the musical traditions of Armenia. We are proud of his contribution through two decades to the programs of Foundation for Iberian Music and we hope to be able to continue working together for at least two decades more.
Mark your calendars: Two Talks by K. Meira Goldberg K. Meira Goldberg In line with the Foundation for Iberian Music’s developing Fandango Project, in concordance with the expanding Digital Humanities at the Graduate Center and beyond, Dr. K. Meira Goldberg, Scholar in Residence, will be an invited speaker at two upcoming online public online events focusing on transatlantic circulations of representations of race. On November 6 she will present “Tilting Across the Racial Divide: Jacinto Padilla ‘El Negro Meri’” at the symposium Race and Blackness in the Atlantic World, at the University of Texas, Austin. On December 11 she will participate in a Public lecture/conversation on Race and Peninsular/Transatlantic Studies at El Taller@KJCC (NYU), a working group dedicated to Peninsular Studies that is organized from NYU but with active participation from faculty and students across the graduate Consortium and beyond to include area scholars and students. The Global Reach of the Fandango in Music, Song and Dance – Editors: K. Meira Goldberg, Antoni Pizà
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!
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
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