Upcoming Conferences in Spain and NY 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, Visionary 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: Reviews 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 Music & Letters Review NOTES Review
Visiting Scholar Dániel Péter Biró During the Spring semester 2025, Dániel Péter Biró will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Barry S. Brook Center. Dr. Biró will undertake ethnomusicological fieldwork, recording members of Portuguese, Syrian, and Yemenite Jewish communities. In particular, he will record members of Congregation Shearith Israel and compare their Portuguese Torah cantillation melodies with those of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Community and those of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montréal. Using techniques of computational ethnomusicology, He will compare the scales and melodic contours of these melodies, revealing their similarities and differences to better illuminate trajectories of melodic transmission and historical context within Torah Trope traditions. This computational analysis will be done in conjunction with Peter van Kranenburg at Utrecht University. For several years, they have collaborated on research of Jewish and Islamic recitation practices as well as Christian plainchant, looking into how aspects of oral transmission, notation and melodic stability functions in these chant traditions. In addition, he hopes to learn more about the use of maqam in Syrian and Yemenite Jewish communities in New York and how this relates to the use of maqam in Syrian and Yemenite Qur’an recitation. This research will inform his compositional work during his time as a visiting scholar at the Brook Center. During this time, he plans to write a series of compositions based on texts of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and these will incorporate melodic elements from Portuguese Jewish communities in New York, Amsterdam and Montréal. In addition, he will write music for the film Elsewhere of Melis Birder, which deals with the history of the Dönme of Turkey, a religious group which integrates ritual elements from Judaism and Islam into their religious and musical practice.
Federico García Lorca, Flamenco, and the Harlem Renaissance 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 RenaissanceAn International SymposiumWed, Mar 5 5:30-6:30pm – Skylight RoomCUNY Graduate Center – 365 5th Avenue at 34th StFree; 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.
Kiki Morente & Carlos Jacoba in Concert 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, Composer’s Commission 2025 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, Composer’s Commision 2024 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.
The 2025 Barry and Claire Brook Award Established in April 2018 by the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation (The Graduate Center of The City University of New York), the BARRY AND CLAIRE BROOK AWARD honors an exceptional single-author or co-authored monograph, dissertation, or edited collection. From 2024 onwards, the prize is awarded to publications on global music history. The award honors an exceptional single-author or co-authored monograph, dissertation, or edited collection on global music history. The prize seeks to recognize publications that contribute to the evolving discourse on global music history and help map its parameters by emphasizing interconnected relationships between diverse musical traditions, rather than presenting them in isolation. We are looking for publications that consider migration, mobility, and the circulation of music across cultures. These publications should explore the synthesis and transculturation of musical traditions, examining how different musical practices have been shaped through global cultural exchange and interaction. Central to this approach is the understanding that music is a cultural practice, shaped by the historical and social contexts it emerges from, and a critical perspective that challenges Western-centric ideas of progress and exceptionalism in music historiography. Whether written individually or collaboratively, we consider publications that prioritize cultural relationships (and joint authorship), as opposed to edited volumes that compile different regional perspectives. The author(s) of the work will receive a certificate and an optional invitation to deliver a public lecture on the topic of the awarded publication at The CUNY Graduate Center. Dissertations have the opportunity to be published in Brepols series Acta Brookiana. Beginning in 2024, the awards committee will consist of three distinguished scholars in the field of global music history who will serve overlapping three-year terms. The previous year’s winner will be invited to join the following year’s committee. The director of the Brook Center serves as an ex officio member of the committee. The committee may appoint one or more ad hoc members to review nominated works written in languages outside their area of expertise. Committee members are: Daniel Chua, University of Hong KongNicholas Cook, University of CambridgeDaniela Fugellie, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile Publication nominations will be accepted by the award committee from any individual or organization. Nominated works may be published in any country and language. Works nominated for the 2025 award must have a copyright date of 2024. Nominations should be submitted to the Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, or by email to Dr. Tina Frühauf, cmrd@gc.cuny.edu. The nominating individual/organization must arrange with the publisher to provide each member of the awards committee with a hard copy or electronic copy of the publication. Nominated publications must be received by committee members by 1 September 2025. Awards will be announced in December 2025. For further information, please contact Dr. Tina Frühauf, cmrd@gc.cuny.edu. Past winners of the Barry and Claire Brook award.