The 58th Annual Pollença Festival, held at the Santo Domingo Cloister in a small town in Mallorca, will commence in one week, on August 7. The world-class classical music festival runs through the entire month of August, and Foundation for Iberian Music director Antoni Pizà has once again contributed program notes for several of this year’s scheduled events.

Pizà wrote the notes for Orquestra Simfònica Illes Balears’ inaugural concert, which features a work by Cuban composer Paquito D’Rivera. You can view the program and read Pizà’s notes online. D’Rivera was the recipient of the Foundation’s Composer’s Commission in 2009, for which he wrote Ladies in White. The work was soon thereafter adapted for use as a dance by the renowned Alvin Ailey dance company. D’Rivera also holds an honorary degree from the Graduate Center, awarded in 2010.

You can buy tickets, as well as view the full lineup and read notes for each concert, on the festival’s website. 

Congratulations to our colleague María Luisa Martínez, who has just published an edition of her dissertation with SEdeM, the Spanish Musicological Society, with Isabel María Domingo.

 Her book, La Biblioteca musical particular de la Infanta Isabel de Borbón, is a critical edition and catalog of the private music library of Isabel de Borbón. This library is one of the most significant collections of Spanish musical heritage, in the holdings of the Royal Conservatory, and Martínez uses it to examine a transitional period in Spanish instrumental music, at the turn of the 20th century.

It is available for 60 euros from SEdeM‘s webstore. 

An edition of selected papers from our 2017 conference Transatlantic Malagueñas and Zapateados in Music, Song and Dance has, at last, been published! Like the previous volume of conference papers, The Global Reach of the Fandango, it is out on Cambridge Scholars Publishing, edited by the conference directors, K. Meira Goldberg, Antoni Piza, and Walter A. Clark of UC Riverside. Its papers encompass a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary issues, ranging from rhythmic structures to post-colonial theory. All papers have been published in English. Preview them on Google Books!

It is available to purchase directly from Cambridge Scholars Publishing for 71 GBP, or it can be purchased from domestic e-tailers such as Amazon.

Last December we announced the new release of Rondeña del Siglo XIX, by guitarist Juan Francisco Padilla. The album consists of works linked to Granada, many of them previously unpublished. Our own resident scholar María Luisa Martínez served as the artistic and historical director for the album, with Graduate Center professor Peter Manuel. (You can read more about the project in the link above.)

Spain’s Scherzo magazine recently featured the album in a glowing review, by Josemi Lorenzo Arribas. Congratulations to Juan, María Luisa, and Peter! Click the image below to read the review.

Antoni Pizà recently appeared on the IB3 program “Al Dia” to discuss the composer Literes and his opera Los Elementos. Los Elementos has had several recent productions in Spain and NYC, for which Pizà served as a consultant and wrote program notes.

Pizà joins the program at 47:10. You can listen online here.

There are two new Spanish language books on the Beatles out in which Antoni Pizà was involved.

On June 18th, a new essay collection for the 50th anniversary of the “White Album,” Los Beatles (EMI, 1968): El Álbum del año de la Revolución (The Beatles: Album of the Year of the Revolution), edited by Francesc Vicens, will be released by T&B Editores. Antoni Pizà contributed an essay on “Revolution 9,” entitled, “What revolution do we talk about when we talk about ‘Revolution 9’.”

It is available to order online. There will be a launch presentation for the book on June 18 in Palma de Mallorca, at Club Diario. You can read more about the book and upcoming launch event in Diario de Mallorca.

Second, Antoni Pizà wrote the foreword for Vaig veure John Lennon: Històries del Maharishi Mahesh Iogui, música i músics a la Mallorca dels anys 70, by Bàrbara Duran Bordoy. The book explores the impact of the workshops that the Maharishi organized in Mallorca at this time, through the first-hand testimonials of locals and attendees. The story of local impact finds an unexpected climax when John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested and summarily deported after being accused of kidnapping Yoko’s daughter Kyoko, who lived in Mallorca with her father, Anthony Cox. Cox, who had sole custody, was a member of the cult The Walk (known now as The Living Word Fellowship) and kept Kyoko hidden from Yoko for the next 30 years.

Vaig veure John Lennon is available now from Lleonard Muntaner.

As the academic year comes to a close, we’d like to review our Joaquín Rodrigo: The Guitar and Beyond festival, which commemorates the memory of composer on the 20th anniversary of his death.

We were honored to have the composer’s daughter, Cecilia Rodrigo, Marquise of the Gardens of Aranjuez and President of the Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo, participate in the discussion panel held at the KJCC. Cecilia’s foundation highlighted some of our festival events in a recent newsletter. (If the link doesn’t work, you may also view it as a PDF here.) You can also learn more about Rodrigo and international anniversary activities in their e-pamphlet.

El Correo Gallego did a write up of our discussion panel at Harvard’s Cervantes Institute, highlighting the contributions of Spanish music scholars such as Walter A. Clark and Javier Suarez Pajares to the field, in addition to festival directors Isabel Pérez Dobarro, Antoni Pizà and Douglas Riva. The panel was also covered in the magazine Codalario.

Most recently, The National Library of Spain opened an exhibition of Rodrigo materials in their holding, which will run through September 8. They kindly mentioned our festival, in conjunction with Walter A. Clark, whom they invited to participate in a roundtable discussion for the exhibit’s opening. El Periodico also gave us a shout out when covering  “The Acoustic Landscape of Joaquín Rodrigo,” the National Library’s exhibit. 

Lastly, Cecilia Rodrigo appeared last month on Radio Clásica program “La dársena” to discuss the anniversary.

Congratulations to Niño de Elche and event organizers Daniel Valtueña and Katherine Carl (students at the Graduate Center) on their residency at the James Gallery.