Posts in Category:
News

The Body Questions: A Talk Series

Sunday October 16, we were pleased to begin a series of book talks with the authors of The Body Questions  There are seven talks in all over the next few months, and we are inviting everyone to attend, beyond the ones who are already participating.

There are in total four events organized by The Foundation for Iberian Music

  • Sunday 16 Oct 12:00-14:00 NY time, with Noel Allende Goitía, Miguel Ángel Vargas, and Antonio Cortijo Ocaña. Here is the Eventbrite link.
  • Sunday 30 Oct 12:0014:00 NY time, with Karen Silen, Ryan Rockmore, Constance Valis Hill, Lynn Brooks, and Guillermo Castro.  Here is the Eventbrite link.
  • Sunday 6 Nov 12:0014:00 NY time, with Russell Brown, Clara Chinoy, Anna Shalom, and Gabriela Estrada
  • Sunday 11 Dec 12:0014:00 NY time, with Scott Barton, Agnes Kamya, and Julie Baggenstoss

These events will be bilingual in English and Spanish/ Estas presentaciones se realizarán en castellano e inglés.

There are also three events being sponsored by Rosemary Cisneros at Coventry University featuring some of the Roma and Roma-allied authors in the book:  Belén Maya, Miguel Ángel Vargas, and Russell Brown. 

These will happen on Nov. 14, 15, and 16 at 17:00-18:30 CET (Spain’s time). More details to follow, but you can register for these events here.

Celebrating Flamenco's Tangled Roots: The Body Questions

Analytical Approaches to World Music Symposium: Call for Papers

Announcing the second installment of the Analytical Approaches to World Music symposium series, dedicated to theoretical, analytical, and cognitive approaches to rhythm and meter in all  global musical traditions, past and present. The symposium will be held virtually on 1-2 June and on 8-9 June 2023, and will be hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center, the Brook Center, and IFTAWM.

Our goal is to facilitate a gathering of some of the world’s leading scholars on these issues in a special four-day virtual research symposium the results of which will be available to scholars worldwide via publication in our eponymous  open-access, peer-reviewed online journal.

The call for papers is here.

More information:

There will be a total of 48 individual presentations. Of these, 16 will be invited presentations. The keynote speaker will be Daniel Avorgbedor (University of Ghana). A call for papers will be issued in late September. Paper presentations will be virtual with a duration of 30+15 minutes. Paper sessions will be held in parallel on June 1–2 and on June 8, and will include two parallel morning sessions (9:00–12:00) and two parallel afternoon sessions (14:00–17:00). The final day of the conference will convene on Friday, June 9 and be devoted to panel and discussion sessions exclusively while using the same schedule mentioned previously. Accordingly, the morning panel sessions (A and B) will meet from 9:00–12:00; the afternoon panel sessions (C and D) will meet from 14:00–17:00.

Invited Speakers:
Simha Arom
Daniel Avorgbedor
Stephen Blum
Sylvie Le Bomin
Susanne Furniss
Keith Howard
David Huron
Kelly Jakubowski
Yonatan Malin
Rainer Polak
Jay Rahn
John Roeder
Chris Stover
David Temperley
Michael Tenzer
Renee Timmers
Richard Widdess

More information is available here.

Rossini’s La Veuve andalouse, a facsimile edition

Based on its autograph sources, lost until recently, Gioachino Rossini: «La Veuve andalouse» presents the first and only critical edition of Rossini’s song. In addition to including a performing transcription of the music and the lyrics in all the languages of the first printed versions, this volume provides many contextual sources, such as several unknown Rossini letters, illustrations, and many contemporaneous reviews as well as other primary sources. All in all, it brings to the present a riveting scena worthy of the most celebrated opera composer of the first half of the nineteenth century.

See the publisher’s web

Authors’ interview about La Veuve

Anna Tonna’s performace of La Veuve

TABLE OF CONTENTS — SUMARIO

List of Illustrations | Lista de ilustraciones
Acknowledgments | Agradecimientos

I. The Story and Context of Rossini’s La Veuve andalouse |  La historia y el contexto de «La Veuve andalouse» de Rossini

· Some Preliminary Remarks | Algunas consideraciones preliminares

· Frontera de Valldemosa, Rossini’s Spanish Friend and La Veuve’s Dedicatee |  Frontera de Valldemosa, el amigo español de Rossini y dedicatario de «La Veuve»

· The Musical Patronage of Isabel de Borbón and La Veuve |  El patronazgo musical de Isabel de Borbón y «La Veuve»

· Documents in Contemporaneous Sources | Documentos en fuentes coetáneas

II. La Veuve andalouse

· Facsimile | Facsímil

· Music Edition | Edición musical

· Notes to the Edition | Notas a la edición

III. Performing La Veuve | La Interpretación de «La Veuve»

· Some Thoughts on the Performance of La Veuve andalouse by Anna Tonna | Reflexiones sobre la interpretación de «La Veuve andalouse» por Anna Tonna

· IPA Transcription by Anna Tonna | Transcripción IPA por Anna Tonna
Literal Translation from the French Text to Facilitate the Comprehension of the Lyrics

· Song Texts | Textos de la canción

· Original versions in French, Spanish, Italian, English and German |  Versiones originales en francés, español, italiano, inglés y alemán

Appendixes | Apéndices

i. Cast of Characters | Galería de personajes

ii. Chronology | Cronología

Bibliography and Discography | Bibliografía i discografía

The authors:

Antoni Pizà has taught at The City University of New York for over twenty-five years, where he also directs The Foundation for Iberian Music. Pizà has authored or co-edited twenty volumes, the latest being Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) and The Way of the Moderns: Six Perspectives on Modernism in Music (Brepols, 2022).

María Luisa Martínez holds a degree in Music History and Sciences (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2005) and a PhD with International Mention in Musicology (Universidad de Jaén, 2016). Since 2015 she has been researcher at The Foundation for Iberian Music at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her latest publications include La biblioteca musical particular de la infanta Isabel de Borbón (Fondo Infanta). Critical edition and catalog (SEdEM, 2019).

In addition to Gioachino Rossini: «La Veuve andalouse», as a research team with María Luisa Martínez, they have published a critical edition of Tomás Bretón: Quinteto en sol mayor para piano y cuerda (ICCMU, 2022).

 

Global Xenakis Centenary Symposium: Available Online

We are delighted to announce the Global Xenakis Centenary Symposium, a hybrid event hosted by the Brook Center’s Xenakis Project of the Americas that took place on 30 September 2022 from 9:30 am to 7:00 pm EDT, is now available for viewing online.

Program details and speaker biographies.

The event took place online and in the Kelly Skylight Room of the Graduate Center of The City University of New York (365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016). 

View the event here.

The entire 41-hour Global Xenakis Marathon (including the above event) is also now available for viewing here.

 

K. Meira Goldberg at the Flamenco Bienal

Our flamenco distinguised resident scholar K. Meira Goldberg presented “Tumulte noir y jaleo de Jerez. Ecos de Harlem jazz en la Sevilla flamenca” at the XXII Bienal de Flamenco (Sevilla, 2022).

Photo by Michael Penland

As the organizers explain, the Concurso del 22 was not an isolated event. Throughout the 1920’s, events, lectures, meetings, conferences and competitions were held worldwide. They aimed to represent the institutionalisation of vernacular music as an artistic field. The Tango in Argentina, Samba in Brazil, Blues in the United States, Son Cubano in Cuba, Rebetiko in Greece, Folk Music in India, Czardas / Klezmer Music in Central Europe, and Arab Folk Music in Egypt, North African countries and the Middle East, amongst many others, conducted similar interventions through which academic culture, high culture and culture of the elite highlighted folk music, its different vernacular variants and the uniqueness of new genres such as jazz and flamenco.Of course, it was not a random event. It was linked with phenomena such as the creation of the first recording industry (in this case, the emergence of the radio and cinema), and with the commencement of cultural decolonisation around the world. This also included the emancipation of new political subjects, national independence processes, the formation of democratic systems, and, as seen in Spain, a process of political regeneration which would culminate with the proclamation of the Republic in 1931.


We intend to establish a frame of cultural comparisons, and to contrast the uniqueness, differences and repetition that is present across all these events to further understand the artistic interventions that were formed in the 1922 competition. Therefore, it is not a matter of continuing to repeat the inaccurate assessments of the ethnographic or musicological errors of Falla or Lorca in their approach to the event, nor of continuing to uncritically celebrate the formula for highlighting flamenco music and dance in competitions, festivals, biennials and deformed mirrors of el Concurso del 22, which remain hegemonic when it comes to highlighting the value of flamenco. It is clear how Borges makes the same paternalistic mistakes as Federico García Lorca when highlighting primitivism, spontaneity and the popularism of the tango and flamenco respectively, but also how his patronage served to honour the ways of making these types of music and dances, and became a spokesperson for cultural matters, when even his disquisitions were considered almost miscreant.

 

The Art of The Flute – Jorge Grundman

Join Jorge Grundman, composer, Alisa Weilerstein, cello, Gili Schwarzman, flute, and Eduardo Frías, piano, in two NY events:

September 27, 2022: Meet the Composer at The National Opera Center

September 28, 2022:  Carnegie Hall

On September 28, the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York will host the second concert by composer Jorge Grundman held in this prestigious concert hall. On this occasion, three internationally renowned interpreters, flutist Gili Schwarzman, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Eduardo Frías, join their talents to interpret a selection of the work for flute, cello and piano by Jorge Grundman. The recital will include three world premieres and one local premiere. The concert program includes works of the recent release of the prestigious Sony Classical company, Jorge Grundman: “Flute Works”. New York audiences will have the opportunity to hear three world premieres,

Lagerfeld in Winter. Sonata for flute and piano Op 77, Tan beautiful as you for trio Op. 91 y Facing Emotions for

Trio Op. 90 dedicated to cellist Alisa Weilerstein. The trio De la Hermosura y Dignidad de Nuestras Almas (Of Beauty and Dignity of Our Souls), Op. 43 and the flute sonata Warhol in Springtime Op. 18 complete the concert.

Jorge Grundman is a full professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and teaches in the Doctorate Program in Music and its Science and Technology. His father, Henri Grundman, a German by birth, emigrated to New York in 1938 and, as a New York citizen, obtained American nationality and met Ana Isla, whom he married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  In this way, the city of New York becomes for Jorge Grundman not only the home that welcomed his parents, his older brother, and his nephew but also the place where some of the most important scenes of his life are created, that would be permanently reflected in his musical work and in countless compositions inspired by the city and its inhabitants. As a result of his numerous walks around New York City, Jorge Grundman composed the cycle of four sonatas for flute and piano “The Warhol’s Four Seasons of New York” to which the two sonatas that can be heard at Carnegie Hall belong.

See complete program for Carnegie Hall. Program CH

See Carnegie complete dossier.  Dossier Carnegie Hall_EN

Pulitzer Prize Winner and 2011 Composers’ Commission Recipient Reviewed in The NY Times

Pianist Adam Kent has just issued a new album entirely dedicated to Pulitzer Prize winner and CUNY colleague Tania León.  “Teclas de Mi Piano” features eleven piano works that were composed across a span of almost fifty years.  The album opens with the eight-minute long HOMENATGE, the Foundation for Iberian Music’s 2011 Composers’ Commission.  This vigorous piece is dedicated to Catalan composer Xavier Monstsalvatge in a kind of a counter colonial wink.  The piece was premiered in 2012 by Adam Kent at Carnegie Hall, then dashingly choreographed by Pedro Ruiz for DANCE THEATER OF HARLEM, and subsequently performed at the Burgos International Music Festival.  It has since been performed uninterruptedly by many pianists and in inumerable venues.

The New York Times states that Adam Kent (see full review) “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.” 

The Invention of Race in Medieval Spain

Our distinguished colleague Dr. K. Meira Goldberg has delivered a lecture entitled “Genética y historia: negritud y alteridad” (“Genetics and history: blackness and otherness”) as part of the University of Granada’s recent Flamenco MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Dr. Goldberg’s lecture can be viewed here (in Spanish only). A text version is also available here.

Dr. Goldberg, “La Meira,” is a flamenco dancer, choreographer, teacher and scholar. She has co-edited many scholarly volumes with Antoini Pizà, is the author of several seminal books on race and the transatlantic circulation of music and dance, especially as it pertains to the Iberian world. 

The Flamenco MOOC is presented “on the occasion of the Centenary of the Cante Jondo Contest held in Granada in 1922” and “intends to analyze the artistic and cultural phenomenon of flamenco in its entire field of action and production, from a transversal, critical and at the same time informative, accessible perspective. to anyone interested in approaching and learning about this transnational art with deep and multiple roots.”