March Talks in Palma de Mallorca March 21, Antoni Pizà will give a talk on disability in music at Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sant Sebastià, followed by a special performance by Víctor Uris of Harmònica Coixa Blues Band. Uris a Palma de Mallorca native and self-taught blues musician who has been called “one of the most pure and original bluesmen in Europe.” Watch him perform with his band below: 7:30 pm Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sant Sebastià Palma de Mallorca, Spain The next week, Pizà will give another talk at the beautiful historical palazzo Can Balaguer, on the opera El reloj de Lucerna by Pere Miquel Marqués. The opera is being performed at Teatre Principal on April 7th and 8th. 8 pm Can Balaguer Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Hear Lost Bretón and Campo Chamber Music Last week, Fundación Juan March Madrid held a concert of previously lost Bretón work and a Campo quartet, performed by Cuarteto Bretón. As we have previously announced, the Bretón work was discovered and edited by María Luisa Martínez, who is a visiting scholar with the Foundation for Iberian Music, and its director, Antoni Pizà. The concert was a great success. It was broadcast on Spain’s national public radio. The full recording can be streamed for free online, here. At the beginning of the broadcast, you may hear a short interview with Martínez about how she discovered the lost Bretón works. The concert program begins with Campo’s “Oriental” quartet, followed by Bretón’s 1905 piano quintet, at 1’28”. There was a touching surprise at the concert: Bretón’s great-grandson attended the concert with his family! They are shown here with Martínez. (From the left: Jose Ignacio Cortés Bretón, grandson of Bretón’s son, Abelardo; María Luisa Martínez; Concha Cortés Zulueta, Jose Ignacio’s daughter; Jose Ignacio’s wife; Concha’s partner.) You can also read a review of the performance on the blog “El Tema 8,” here.
Modern Flamenco at Instituto Cervantes This coming Monday, February 12, see our resident flamencologist K. Meira Goldberg perform at Instituto Cervantes NY with José Moreno. Goldberg will be performing her original program Raíz, which she recently debuted at La Nacional. About Raíz: Inspired by the work of great Spanish artists such as García Lorca or Camarón and by cultural traditions such as cante jondo, African rhythms and Jewish rituals, R A Í Z seeks to create a ceremony of immersion in the rites of flamenco. The performance emerges from the poetic and transgressive realism of arte povera: a return to simple objects and messages, a stage where traces of nature and the industrial come alive. The Crone embodies the strength of instability. She enacts rejection and rebellion, memory and faith, feasting and solitude. Her pilgrimage maps a homeland containing many forces in tension. This contemporary quejío, opens spaces and sensations where wings may find ground and roots take flight. Tickets: $20 ($15 ICNY members) 7:00 PM 12 February 2018 Galeria, Instituto Cervantes 211-215 East 49th Street, NYC
CANCELED Weaponizing Flamenco: Roundtable Discussion This event has been canceled because of the winter storm in NYC. We are very sorry for any inconvenience. The March 23rd event has not been affected, so please join us then! March 22, as a part of Flamenco Festival NYC, the Foundation for Iberian Music will host a roundtable discussion at City Center. Weaponizing Flamenco: Embodied Voices for Social Change Contemporary flamenco artists are questioning stereotypes that tie flamenco to the past and are seeking an interdisciplinary dialogue with artists and cultural workers of other genres. Politics have entered the expressive palette of many young flamenco artists, including influential guitarist Juan José Suarez “El Paquete” and stunning vocalist Naike Ponce, whose new album is a lyric elegy to women. Please join these artists in a conversation with a panel of brilliant New York-based dance artists and scholars, including dance-maker Arielle Rosales, Tunisian protest singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi, and tap historian Constance Valis Hill, about making work attentive to the roar of battle and the stories of love and community that shake and wake audiences to envision a future of different possibilities. This round table, curated and moderated by K. Meira Goldberg and the Foundation for Iberian Music, will explore some of the intricacies of these issues. Afterward, why not join Naike and Paquete at Joe’s Pub, for their Flamenco Festival performance? For tickets and more information, visit the FF NYC event page. Admission: free 6:30 pm 22 March 2018 City Center, Studio 4 131 W 55th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues) New York, NY 10019
Pepe Habichuela at the Graduate Center As a part of Flamenco Festival NYC, on March 23rd, the Foundation for Iberian Music and the Graduate Center’s Live@365 will present Musical Dynasties: A Conversation with the Habichuela Clan. Flamenco is cultivated in musical legacies across generations. Join in a conversation with two scions of a legendary musical lineage who are also Grammy-nominated musical innovators: the renowned Pepe Habichuela, patriarch of the Habichuela family of guitarists from Granada, Spain, and his son Josemi Carmona, of Ketama and Barbería del Sur. Also joining, from another dynasty, is renowned Latin jazz artist Arturo O’Farrill. The artists will speak with K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and Sonidos Negros, and scholar-in-residence at the Foundation. Admission: Free Reservations required. 7:00 pm 23 March 2018 Proshansky Auditorium The Graduate Center
Music in 21st Century Society: Celebrating 6 Years of Lectures We are sad to announce that the Lloyd Old and Constance Old Lecture series, Music in 21st Century Society, will no longer be continuing. Our final lecture was Richard Taruskin, who spoke in December 2016 on “The Many Dangers of Music.” The lecture series was founded by Constance Old in 2012, in memory of her brother, Dr. Lloyd Old, and curated by Dr. Antoni Pizà. Dr. Old was a groundbreaking researcher in cancer immunotherapy. He worked as a research physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, he was the Scientific Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and he was the Founding Director of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Cancer Research Institute. He was an amateur violinist and shared a love of classical music with his sister, who herself is a historian of music and dance iconography. Dr. Old was a great lover of Mozart, but Constance decided to dedicate the memorial foundation to exploring the role of music in modern society, contributing to our ongoing understanding and relationship with music as her brother contributed to modern science. Over the series’s six years, we were able to bring some of the brightest thinkers in contemporary and modernist music to sold-out halls. Each event included performances of modern music. The series’s inaugural lecture, given by the eminent pianist and writer Charles Rosen, was in April of 2012, on “The Challenges of Modern Music.” It was Rosen’s last public appearance before his death. In spring of 2013, music critic Paul Griffiths joined us in conversation with Columbia University Orchestra’s music director, Jeff Milarsky, for the stimulating “We Are What We Hear.” That fall, renowned composer Philip Glass gave a lecture on “The Creative Pulse,” with award-winning flutist Claire Chase, of the International Contemporary Ensemble. In 2014, Kronos Quartet’s founding member, violinist David Harrington, appeared in conversation with NPR’s Brooke Gladstone, to discuss the string quartet in the 21st century. Featured on this program were resident quartets of the Kaufman Center’s Face the Music project, a youth ensemble that Harrington mentors. Fall 2015, philosopher and polemicist Roger Scruton gave the talk “Walking Among Noise: Tonality, Atonality, and Where We Go From Here,” with a response from popular music critic and visiting faculty member Greil Marcus. And our series concluded with last year’s talk by the renowned and prolific musicologist Richard Taruskin, who spoke of “The Many Dangers of Music” with Prof. Scott Burnham. We would like to wish a heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended these lectures and helped to make them great successes. It was a pleasure to bring these speakers to you each year. Videos of each lecture are available through the links above, and we hope that newcomers to the foundation will enjoy them.
New Reviews of Book on Benet Casablancas Last fall we announced an upcoming book on composer Benet Casablancas, who has collaborated with the Foundation for Iberian Music many times. The book is now out and we are delighted to report that it is receiving glowing reviews. Codalario calls the book “excellent” in their detailed review here. Todo Literatura also reviewed the book, virtually calling Casablancas the hardest working composer in Spain. The book was reviewed in Casablancas’ hometown newspaper Diari de Sabadell (click image to enlarge): And finally (for now), Barcelona’s La Vanguardia mentioned the book in their article on this L’Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona concert, which featured works by Casablancas:
PostClassical Ensemble Begins Residency at National Cathedral Last summer the PostClassical Ensemble was appointed a residency at Washington’s National Cathedral, as one facet of cathedral music director Michael McCarthy’s goal of making the cathedral a center of community life, as cathedrals were in medieval Europe. The Ensemble recently gave their first official concert as a resident ensemble of the cathedral. PCE was co-founded by Angel Gil-Ordóñez, who is special guest conductor of our own resident Perspectives Ensemble, with Joseph Horowitz. The mission of PCE is to work as a “musical laboratory,” which, McCarthy explained to the Washington Post, fits well into his vision of using the cathedral to present “multidimensional” events. PostClassical Ensemble events are always more immersive educational experiences than mere concerts. Indeed, their concerts are called “immersion events” and often include exhibitions and symposiums that augment their carefully considered musical programs. PCE’s first official performance in residency was a program called “Music in Wartime,” given on Pearl Harbor Day, and it has received glowing reviews. The program featured music written during WWII, by Shostakovich, Schoenberg, and Hans Eisler, accompanied by a recording of FDR’s broadcast announcing that the country was going to war. Ensemble co-founder Joseph Horowitz said last summer to the Washington Post that PCE uses music to seek “mutual understanding and human betterment.” It is not hard to find echoes of current national anxieties in the “Music in Wartime” program, which features not just wartime music, but music composed by Jewish refugees in America. As the Post writes in their review of the December 7th concert, “the cathedral’s choir, dressed in street clothes and marching up the aisle carrying their own chairs, sent not hymns but songs of proletariat revolution.”
Collaboration with the 2018 NYC Flamenco Festival The Foundation for Iberian Music is delighted to be a participant in the upcoming 2018 NYC Flamenco Festival. We will be hosting a symposium with our resident flamencologist, K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and the forthcoming Sonidos Negros. The Flamenco Festival is one of NYC’s largest annual dance events and the coming year’s festival will be held March 2–11. We look forward to sharing more details about the festival and our symposium as program details are finalized! As usual, follow us on Facebook and on Twitter for the latest announcements!