Poems Without Words.  Thursday, June 22, 2023 8 PM Carnegie Hall.

Poems Without Words comes out at a time when our lives were doomed to fear and sadness, moments when Guinovart wanted to give us rays of hope and confidence in a better future, publishing a piece every day on his social networks so that we feel accompanied. Poems Without Words will be presented on June 22 in one of the most prestigious and emblematic venues in the world, Carnegie Hall in New York. The concert, was dedicated to the memory of Alicia de Larrocha, with whom Albert Guinovart maintained a close professional and admiring relationship.  Guinovart was the 2014 Composers Commission recipient awarded by The Foundation for Iberian Music.

 

 

See full program in Catalan, Spanish, and English:

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_English

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_Catalán

Dossier Poems Without Words_Albert Guinovart_Español

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/06/22/Albert-Guinovart-Piano-0800PM

https://www.miottaemoliere.com/poems-without-words-carnegie-hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiko Mora, professor of Communications at the University of Alicante, Spain, will present a talk on SPANISH DANCE, RACE, AND NATION IN THE US: FROM THE CANSINO BROTHERS TO RITA HAYWORTH.

See eventbrite link.

In January 1913, Sevillian dancers Elisa and Eduardo Cansino arrived in New York to perform for socialite and cultural maven Marion Stuyvesant-Fish. Soon the Cansinos were being featured in vaudeville shows and musical comedies all over the country. Their rapid rise, along with the outbreak of World War I, led the rest of the Cansino brothers (José, Paco, Ángel, Antonio and Rafael) to cross the Atlantic in search of their own portions of fame and fortune. By 1920, all the Cansino siblings had settled in Manhattan and would spend their entire lives in the USA. Among the best-known Spanish dancers here for at least the first half of the twentieth century, the Cansinos had an outsized impact on the US imagination.

In this lecture professor Mora traces the professional careers of the Cansino family as dancers, teachers and Hollywood choreographers from the perspective of race and national identity. The Cansinos gained the spotlight just as the US was emerging as a superpower on the global stage. How did the Cansinos perform the contradictory images of Spain as both conquistador­—the first American superpower—and “Moorish”/“Gypsy”? They played up Spain’s kinship with the US as both White and European while simultaneously conjuring Spain’s darkly exotic Otherness. At this pivotal moment in the rise of the imperial US, such oscillating images of Spain fed a US fantasy of racial purity, signaling both kinship with (White) Europe and (racialized) superiority in the wake of successful conquest. In this telling, the US had successfully expunged its Native, African, and Spanish American cultural inheritance by folding it into an emerging modernity. By contrast, Spain’s Whiteness was shadowed by miscegenation and haunted by the fall of its once-great empire. What famed jazz artist Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge” thus designated an inferior and alien off-whiteness. Spanish dance, as a metonym of Spain, treaded the narrow edge between White European dances and Black Afro-American dances, a liminal position that the Cansinos had to negotiate throughout their careers.

Despite the Cansinos’ efforts to whitewash their dancing by claiming origins in “Old Spain” (in the anti-modern sense of the term), the truth was that many of their acts had a decidedly modern, Afro-American aspect. Flamenco (and the Cansinos) tapped into the vibrant rhythms of popular dance by drawing from up-to-date Afro-Cuban dance, but simultaneously sought to legitimate these dances as “national” by evoking Spain’s indigenous “primitivism.” Thus, the Cansinos’ choice of repertoire situated Spanish dance on a borderline in two related ways. First, they tuned in to the fashionable rhythms of the day in order to make their act commercially successful, but without conceding their pedigree of Spanish tradition and refined technique. Secondly, the subtitles of their dances (e.g., “The Dance of Grace”), evoked the classical antiquity of Roman “Hispania,” so attractive to artists and audiences of US modern dance.

            White for Blacks, Black for Whites, Latino for Anglos, European for Latin-Americans, the Cansinos’ dilemmas would finally be resolved in the figure of Margarita del Carmen Cansino, the world-famous actress and dancer known as Rita Hayworth. 

Klavierhaus  presents pianist Adam Kent in a two-concert centennial tribute to Alicia de Larrocha – Saturday and Sunday May 20 and 21, 2023 at 7 p.m.

With guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna

Organized by Institut Ramon Llull and co-sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music.

 

• Saturday evenings May 20 at 7p.m, a concert including works for piano and voice composed by, dedicated to, or disseminated by Alicia de Larrocha, including several New York premieres.  Composers will include:  Alicia de Larrocha, Frank Marshall (her teacher), Joan Torra (her husband), Carlos Surinach, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, Federico Mompou, Xavier Montsalvatge, Lleonard Balada, Isaac Albeniz, Mateo Albeniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Antoni Soler.

This event will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Candice Agree, Joseph Patrych, and the artists.

• Sunday May 21 at 7pm, guest artist mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna will join Adam Kent for an additional event.

 

 

 

A personal reflection from Adam Kent

“When I was 11 years old, my grandparents took me to hear the Catalan pianist Alicia de Larrocha in concert at Avery Fisher Hall. I was looking forward to the first half of the program, which included music by composers familiar to me—Bach, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. The second half looked more daunting—dedicated entirely to works by a Spaniard named Manuel de Falla, whose last name I assumed rhymed with “Paula”. Traffic was heavy coming into Manhattan that afternoon, and we missed the entire first half. It didn’t take more than the first few notes of Falla’s “Danza de la molinera” to make me realize that all was not lost. All at once, I found myself seduced by the robust folkloricism of this music, coupled to the exotic harmonic world and fanciful voicing of so much French Impressionistic music. Ever since then, the music of Spain has been central to my work as a performing artist and educator.”

 

ADAM KENT                                                                                                 

www.adamkentmusic.com

Pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music on four continents. A winner of the American Pianists Association Fellowship and Simone Belsky Music Awards, Dr. Kent also received top prizes in the Thomas Richner, the Juilliard Concerto, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competitions, and is a recipient of the Arthur Rubinstein Prize and the Harold Bauer Award.  Dr. Kent made his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in 1989 and is a favorite on N.Y.C. area radio stations.

His recently released recording of the piano music of the Cuban-American composer Tania León entitled “Teclas de mi piano” has garnered critical praise from The New York Times, which reported, “The pianist Adam Kent has the measure of León’s sound throughout, whether he’s dealing with student pieces written in the 1960s or more recent items like “Homenatge,” from 2011. In the latter, he brings a virtuoso’s zest to the dance rhythms and bluesy clusters that cavort in the composition’s opening minutes. But he also offers a patient, less showy sensibility during the ruminative airs of the final minutes…Throughout, Kent pays as much attention to León’s formal invention as to the way she reworks her diverse inspirations.” All About the Arts enthuses about the disc “…the gifted Adam Kent triumphantly takes on every one of the pianistic hurdles contained in Tania León’s panoply of works.” Among his other critically acclaimed commercial recordings are a CD of Ernesto Halffter’s complete piano music on Bridge Records and performances of chamber works by Joaquín Turina, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez with the Damocles Trio and Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton on the Claves label.

The music of Spain and Latin-America has long been a specialty of Dr. Kent’s, whose advocacy has been acknowledged by the Spanish government on numerous occasions. In 2011, King Juan Carlos I of Spain honored the pianist by bestowing Spain’s Orden al Mérito Civil, and the Spanish Consulate has also sponsored appearances by Dr. Kent at Weill Recital and Merkin Concert Halls. The Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture awarded him a grant for Música por doquier/Hispanic Music Everywhere, a year-long celebration of Spanish and Latin-American music with the Damocles Trio and Spanish composer and conductor Salvador Brotons, and The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU have also sponsored a number of Dr. Kent’s Hispanic-themed projects. Dr.  Kent has also won grants to commission new works from Tania León, Salvador Brotons, Miguel-Ángel Roig-Francolì, and others. He has contributed performances and interviews to documentaries on Spanish composers Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Federico Mompou. Ms. León’s music has been an area of particular advocacy for Dr. Kent, who has programmed her works in concerts throughout the world, including a version of Homenatge choreographed by Pedro Ruiz for Dance Theater of Harlem.

Since 2016, Dr. Kent has been a professor of music at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where he was recently awarded the 2023 Susan Sutton Smith Award for Academic Excellence. Summers have found him serving as Director of Cultural Outreach at the Burgos International Music Festival and teaching and performing at the Summit Music Festival in N.Y, Alberta Pianofest in Edmonton, Canada, and the Cursos de Verano of the Fundación Princesa de Asturias in Oviedo, Spain. He received a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. He holds as well B.M. and M.M. degrees from Manhattan School of Music, where he was a student of Solomon Mikowsky. In April 2023, Dr. Kent began a three-year tenure on the American Fulbright Specialist roster.

Mezzo Soprano Anna Tonna has been described as “mezzo heroine who knows how to sing Rossini” by the Rossini Gessellschaft and as “showing off her warm, secure mezzo-soprano to maximum advantage” by the New York Magazine; accolades such as these explain her constant demand as a recitalist and opera singer in both Europe and the Americas. The combination of a highly developed coloratura with a full, balanced, flexible lower register have guaranteed her acclaim as a lyric mezzo, both in familiar roles Rosina, Carmen, Dorabella, as well as in more rare repertoire by Paisiello, Vivaldi, Mascagni, Zandonai and Giordano. 

Additionally, Anna’s passion for excellence in the recital genre have garnered her increasing acclaim in both the U.S. and Europe, particularly her path breaking explorations of the repertoire of composers from Spain and Latin America. Anna’s recitals are a source of expectation and excitement in New York City, where she has performed at both the Alice Tully Hall and Rose Center of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, New York’s Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The same excitement greets her appearances in Spain, with performances at the Auditorio Nacional de España, Teatro del Escorial and the Academia Marshall in Barcelona.

She has collaborated with Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, Festival Iberoamericano de las Artes in Puerto Rico, Música de Cámara of New York, El Festival de Segovia, Joy in Singing, Elysium Between Two Continents and the Nassau Music Festival among others. Of note among the countless recital of songs are appearances at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the St. Anton Palace in Valletta (Malta), the Palacio Nacional de Ájuda in Lisbon, Teatro 1793 at Villa Adlrovandi Mazzacorati in Italy, the Atheneums of Madrid and Barcelona and at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg. Her recital of “Songs of post Civil War Spain” at the Fundación Juan March of Madrid was broadcast on Radio Television Española and hailed as “a tour de force” by the Spanish newspaper ABC. 

​Anna’s artistry has been recognized by the Liederkranz Foundation, The Gerda Lissner Foundation, National Opera Association, Opera at Florham/Violeta Dupont Vocal Competition, and a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in and perform Spanish Art Song in Spain, where she has established a thriving career. Commercial recordings that have preserved some of these efforts include “The songs of Julio Gómez” with disc label VERSO and “España alla Rossini” which premiered in April of 2016 with iTinerant Classics. 

In 2017 she bowed in the role of Laura Adorno in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” with the Brno State Opera in the Czech Republic. In 2018 she was heard in the roles of Clarina in Rossini’s “Il cambiale di Matrimonio” and of Sally in Barber’s “A Hand of Bridge” for Little Opera Zamora in Spain, a Zarzuela concert at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg (Germany), at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (NYC), The Americas Society (NYC) and in Bernstein’s “Songfest” for Maverick Concerts (NY). 

Her 2018 season includes diplomatic concerts in Lisbon and the Dominican Republic; in Rossini vocal recital in Italy for the Circolo Lirico di Bologna and Museo Glauco Lombardi in Parma as well as in Spain for the Museo del Romanticismo and the Festival de Navas del Marqués in collaboration Duo Savigni; a German lieder duet concert with baritone Alfredo García at Festival ASISA in Spain, as well as appearances at The Sembrich Opera Museum (NY). 

In the fall of 2019 she bowed in a concert with orchestra with Teatro Grattacielo in Manhattan under the baton of Israel Gursky; as La Roldán in the zarzuela “El barbero de Sevilla” with New Camerata Opera; and in a concert of opera and zarzuela for the Auditorio National de España in Madrid. 

​Upcoming appearances include: the role of Glaura in Jose Lidon’s “Glaura y Cariolano” for LittleOpera Zamora; chamber music concerts in New York, Madrid, Italy, Viena and Germany in the summer and fall of 2022. Her newest disc with pianist Mac McClure, “1915:  Trip to Granada” (Classical Kat) premieres in spring of 2022.

 

 

 

PostClassical Ensemble in collaboration with The Foundation for Iberian Music Presents “Entwined: A Double Feature”

PCE celebrates the 100th anniversary of the seminal opera “El retablo de maese Pedro” with animation, flamenco dancing and a premiere performance about Spanish artists Manual de Falla and Frederico Garcia Lorca, starring David Strathairn and Robin DeJesus

See full PROGRAM here: RetabloDeMaesePedro

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Manuel de Falla’s seminal chamber opera El retablo de maese Pedro, inspired by Don Quixote, PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) will present Entwined: A Double Feature on Wednesday, April 19 at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater at 7:30pm.

As the name implies, this concert, which has been named an advanced ‘critic’s choice’ by Washington Classical Review, will feature two separate performances. The evening will be centered around the 100th anniversary of the Spanish comic opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show), which is rarely performed in the United States but is a seminal work in the Spanish canon. This performance is presented in partnership with the Embassy of Spain as part of a global celebration of the opera’s anniversary.

“Master Peter’s Puppet Show, written in 1923, is possibly Manuel de Falla’s best work,” PCE Music Director, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, “It’s a trip into the past but understood not as nostalgia but as the starting point of an original and innovative way for composition in a new Century.”

The first presentation of the evening will be the first public showing of Entwined: Love’s Magicians, a new multi-disciplinary performance piece created by acclaimed playwright/director Derek Goldman (Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski). The piece is a ‘concert reading’ inspired by the deep and unlikely friendship between Federico García Lorca, widely regarded as the greatest Spanish poet of the twentieth century, and Manuel de Falla, Spain’s most prominent composer of the period. The role of Falla will be read by Emmy Award winner David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck, Nomadland, Where The Crawdads Sing) while Lorca will be read by Tony Award Nominee Robin DeJesus (Tick, Tick, Boom, In the Heights, Wicked, see following photo). The piece will feature projected visual design by Kevork Mourad, Flamenco artists, singer Ismael Fernandez, dancer Sonia Olla, and guitarist Ricardo Marlow, along with the PCE Ensemble.

 

“On the surface Lorca and Falla were a study in contrasts, given Lorca’s homosexuality and radically expressive exploration of poetic and theatrical forms and Falla’s devout Catholicism and austerity,” says playwright/director Goldman. “But the story of their relationship is an inspiring account of two extraordinary artists bonded through a shared vision of art that emerges from and belongs to the soul of the people. It is also a tragic and timely account of artistic visionaries whose lives and work fell victim to a Fascist political regime.”

Following Goldman’s piece, PCE will present a concert opera version of de Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro, written in 1923 and inspired by the second part of Don Quixote, set in the early 17th century Spain. In this collaboration with visual artist Kevork Mourad, the puppets that were used in original versions of the performance will be replaced by animated illustrations synced with the score, some created live on stage. The opera will be conducted by PCE Music Director Angel Gil-Ordóñez and performed by PostClassical Ensemble with an international trio of soloists, that includes vocalists Israel Lozano (tenor), Jennifer Zetlan (soprano) and José Sacín (bass-baritone).

El retablo de maese Pedro was originally dedicated to Princess de Polignac who commissioned the work and who premiered it at her salon in 1923. In the opera, Don Quixote is watching a puppet play. It is a Medieval story of love and quarrels between Moors and Christians, in which Don Gayferos, a knight at Charlemagne’s court, frees his wife Melisendra, who was held captive by Moors.

Entwined: A Double Feature will have a run time of approximately 90 minutes and include conversations contextualizing each piece prior to the performance as well as a post-concert discussion with Gil-Ordóñez, Derek Goldman, and others.Tickets to Entwined are available online through the Kennedy Center at: https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/classical-music/2022-2023/entwined-a-double-feature/. All tickets are $45. For other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Kennedy Center Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540.

Angel Gil-Ordóñez, a frequent guest conductor across Europe, the United States and Latin America, Angel Gil-Ordóñez holds the positions of Music Director/Conductor of PostClassical Ensemble, Principal Guest Conductor of New York’s Perspectives Ensemble, and Music Director of the Georgetown University Orchestra. He also serves as advisor for education and programming for Trinitate Philharmonia, a program in León, Mexico, modeled on Venezuela’s El Sistema. Originally from Madrid, Spain, Gil-Ordóñez trained under Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996). Though Gil-Ordóñez’s musical affinities are global, he has long championed Spanish repertoire, including works and composers little-known outside Spain. In 2006 the King of Spain bestowed upon Gil-Ordóñez the Royal Order of Queen Isabella, the country’s highest civilian decoration, for advancing Spanish culture around the world, and in particular for advocating Spanish music in its cultural context.

Derek Goldman is an award-winning international stage director, producer, festival director, playwright, adapter, developer of new work, teacher, and published scholar, whose artistic work has been seen around the country, Off-Broadway and at numerous major regional theaters, as well as around the world. He is Artistic & Executive Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, the first signature joint initiative of the School of Foreign Service and Georgetown College, with a mission “to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics.” He has received the President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at Georgetown and the Provost’s Award for Innovation in Teaching for his work as creator of In Your Shoes, an internationally recognized groundbreaking model for using performance to counter polarization. He is the director and co-author of the internationally celebrated production Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, starring David Strathairn, as well as co-director of the feature film adaptation Remember This.

New York-based artist Kevork Mourad employs his technique of live drawing and animation in concert with musicians – developing a collaboration in which art and music harmonize with one another. Counted among his diverse collaborators are Yo-Yo Ma, Kim Kashkashian, and PCE, and they stretch from North America to African, Asia, and the Middle East. Mourad premiered his animated film, 4 Acts for Syria, at the Stuttgart Animation Festival and was the 2016 recipient of the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize. His works are in the permanent collection of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Mourad has been a resident teaching artist at Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Holy Cross (Worcester).

PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) creates a welcoming, inclusive and joyful experience that nourishes the soul, touches the spirit and inspires the mind. Through the brilliant playing of some of the area’s most distinguished musicians, and an array of artistic mediums, PCE strives to capture each composer’s extraordinary vision along with the cultural, political and artistic landscape in which their music was created.

www.postclassical.com

 

Bretón’s Piano Quintet, edited by Antoni Pizà and María L. Martínez of the Foundation for Iberian Music, has been performed once again. This time in the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid.  The edition was also reviewed by Mundo clásico. The Fundación Juan March has also made available their recording of the portentous work rediscovered by researchers Antoni Pizà and María L. Martínez.

 

 

 

Rediscovery and New Publication: Bretón’s Piano Quintet in G Major