More Press for Angel Gil-Ordóñez It’s a day ending in y, and Angel Gil-Ordóñez has received more great press. Gil-Ordóñez is principal guest conductor of Perspectives Ensemble (in residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music, with artistic director Sato Moughalian) and musical director of the PostClassical Ensemble (in residence at the National Cathedral). This week, Madrid’s newspaper El País has an article on him and PCE co-founder Joe Horowitz, discussing their explorations of how artists such as George Gershwin synthesized classical and popular musics. You can read the full article here (in Spanish).
PostClassical Ensemble in The Washington Post The PostClassical Ensemble‘s new program on the influence of gamelan music in Western classical recently received an excellent review in The Washington Post. PCE is directed and conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, who is also principal guest conductor of our resident Perspectives Ensemble. (Perspectives Ensemble’s recent program, Falla!, will soon be available from Naxos Records!) “Cultural Fusion: The Gamelan Experience” told the story of gamelan’s introduction to the West at the 1889 Paris Exposition, where it was heard by such composers as Debussy and Ravel, through its influence on modernists such as Lou Harrison, to contemporary composer Bill Alves. The concert included performances by the Indonesian Embassy Balinese and Javanese gamelans and dancers. Anne Midgette (classical music critic for WaPo) writes, “The context was particularly edifying for the light it shed on Messiaen, who is known as a deeply spiritual composer who worked his Catholicism into his pieces; underlining the echoes of the gamelan in his work suggested a kind of idealization of the purity of this folk instrument as an embodiment of spirituality, an uncomfortable sort of colonialization, were it not so clearly also an act of homage.” About the revived program of Harrison works (which PCE last performed in 2011), Midgette adds, “the freshness of the resulting timbres in big sounds that sound now all-American…and now like some new language of its own, is worth the investment, and getting to hear it live again was a treat.” You can read the entire review from January 24 here. You may also see video of PCE performing Lou Harrison’s concerto for violin and percussion at the Indonesian embassy on the PCE website.
Benet Casablancas’ First Opera to Premiere in Barcelona Composer Benet Casablancas, who has collaborated numerous times with the Foundation for Iberian Music, will premiere his opera, L’Enigma de Lea at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona next month. The libretto is by renowned author Rafael Argullol and the production is directed by Josep Pons (music) and Carme Portacelli (stage). The opera is a first for both Casablancas and Argullol and we are excited to see what they bring to the genre! About L’Enigma de Lea: Lea, a creature who has belonged to God and exists to serve the divine pleasure (“pure instinct, crystalline sensuality”), lives in a place beyond time and cannot reveal her secret. The bearer of immortality, she is under surveillance from two monstrous beings who guarantee morality in opposition to individual freedom. This opera, the first composed by Benet Casablancas, to a text by writer Rafael Argullol, expresses the ideal that was the last of the Romantic Utopias: that of touching the Absolute. Josep Pons will head a team of experts in contemporary music who will tackle the challenging score, while Carme Portacelli, one of the finest contemporary stage directors, will be in charge of the mise-en-scène. The production premieres February 9 at 6:00 pm, with additional performances on Feb 10, 12, and 13. Tickets begin at only 13 Euros. Visit the Liceu’s site to purchase tickets and for cast information.
Antoni Pizà Presenting at the University of Chicago Antoni Pizà will be giving a paper at the 17th International Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society at The University of Chicago, 25–27 April, 2019. The topic of this year’s conference is “The Aesthetics and Politics of Conflict.” Pizà will give his paper, on John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s first performance in Spain in 1966, on April 26 in the 2:00 pm session on Modern Musics in Catalonia. Please see the conference website for full program and registration information.
Sonidos Negros Presentation for Flamenco Festival NY The Foundation for Iberian Music is pleased to once again participate in the New York Flamenco Festival, which will be held in early March this year. (See the City Center’s website for information on mainstage performances, March 7–10.) This year, we are hosting a presentation by none other than K. Meira Goldberg, our resident flamencologist and director of the Natives, Africans, Roma, and Europeans conference series (which will have its third installment this April). On March 5, Goldberg will present her latest book, Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco, in a discussion with Antoni Pizà (Foundation for Iberian Music). You will have the chance to see the films that are the subject of two of the book’s chapters: Danse Espagnole de la Feria (1923), shot by Lumière at the World’s Fair in Paris, 1900, which features the first male flamenco dancer ever recorded (a black man of Cuban descent, Jacinto Padilla, “El Negro Meri”); and four short films shot in Sevilla in 1917 by Léonide Massine as preparation for choreographing The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), which feature Juana Vargas “La Macarrona,” her sister María Vargas “La Macarrona,” and their first cousin Antonio López Clavijo “Ramírez.” About the book: What can flamenco dance tell us about race and racism in the world wrought by slavery? From 711–1492, parts of the Iberian Peninsula were ruled by a succession of vast Afro-Islamic caliphates—and were simultaneously the epicenter of Christian Europe’s battle to eject these forces. Christian victory came in the same year that Christopher Columbus’s landing in the Americas set in motion a massive and catastrophic shift in global hegemony. Gradually, Spain’s system of “blood purity,” a tool in the battle against Islam, became what we now think of as “race”; Christian evangelization was a weapon of conquest. Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (Oxford University Press, 2018), traces how flamenco’s ostentatious rebelliousness, tumultuous sensuality, quixotic idealism, and fierce soulfulness embody resistance, the lament for what has been lost, and the values and aspirations of those rendered imperceptible by abjection, enslavement, and colonization. Brenda Dixon Gottschild (professor amerita Temple University, author of The Black Dancing Body) calls the book “a majestic work—readable, revelatory,” Alberto del Campo Tejedor (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville) calls it “surprising and necessary.” Please join us for this chance to have a conversation with the author about a vital and overlooked part of flamenco’s history. Sonidos Negros is available for purchase from Oxford for $35. Admission: free 7:30 pm 5 March, 2019 Martin E. Segal Theater The Graduate Center 365 5th Ave, NYC
Forthcoming Recording of Perspectives Ensemble’s “Falla!” Perspectives Ensemble, under the artistic direction of Sato Moughalian (founder) and Angel Gil-Ordóñez (guest conductor), put on a stunning multimedia production of works by Manuel de Falla last year, featuring animation and live art by Kevork Mourad. The program included El Amor brujo,with renowned cantaora Esperanza Fernandez, and Master Peter’s Puppet Show, with baritone Alfredo García and soprano Jennifer Zetlan. Perspectives Ensemble also recorded this program, and the album, Falla!, will be released this April on Naxos. Gramophone Magazine featured the album in a list of upcoming recordings to look for in their January issue.
Assunta “Sunny” Carballeira: 1925-2019 Assunta “Sunny” Carballeira has died at the age of 93. Sunny was a great patron of Spanish music, especially the music of Catalonia, and was a friend to the Foundation for Iberian Music. Sunny was a pianist and singer, but she ultimately left her career as a performer and concentrated on arts patronage. Herself Italian-American, she married Manuel Carballeira, a Spanish-American throat doctor for the Metropolitan Opera who was decorated by King Juan Carlos I for his service to Spanish diplomacy. She hosted many events at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, on whose board she was a member, as well as at her homes in Flushing and Long Island. She never failed to support Spanish musicians and composers in New York City, including Frederic Mompou, Carmen Bravo, Xavier Montsalvatge, Alicia de Larrocha, José Carreras, Victoria de los Ángeles, Juan Pons, Ernesto Halffter, Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé, and Carlos Suriñach. The legacy of Spanish music in New York is immeasurably richer thanks to the loving support of Sunny Carballeira. We offer our condolences to her family and friends. Services will be held January 23 and 24 in Flushing, NY. Please see her obituary for information.
Transatlantic Rhythms Conference CFP Deadline Extended The next conference in our Natives, Africans, Roma, and Europeans series, “Transatlantic Rhythms in Music, Song and Dance,” will be held April 11–13, 2019, in Veracruz, Mexico. If you were unable to submit a proposal by the original deadline of December 31, you’re in luck! The deadline has been extended to February 11, 2019. (You will have the opportunity to revise any abstracts before publication.) Please read the Call for Papers here for information about the conference and submission guidelines.
Joaquín Rodrigo Panel at NYU’s Juan Carlos I Center As a part of our Joaquín Rodrigo: The Guitar and Beyond festival, we will be holding a panel at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I Center. The panel will feature performances by Federico Díaz (guitar, DMA student at the Graduate Center) and Anna Tonna (mezzo-soprano). The panel will include Walter A. Clark (UC Riverside), Isabel Pérez Dobarro, Antoni Pizà (Foundation for Iberian Music), Douglas Riva, Javier Suárez-Pajares (visiting scholar at the Graduate Center, with Brooks Center projects Foundation for Iberian Music and Music in Gotham), and special guest Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of Joaquín (founder of Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo and Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo). A reception will follow the panel. 9 April 2018 7 pm Admission: Free King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University Conference Room and Atrium 53 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012