Surveilling the Imagination: Akhmatova, Shostakovich, and the Plight of the Artist in Stalinist Russia A seminar with Prof. Julia Trubikhina, Professor of Russian Literature at the Division of Russian and Slavic Studies at Hunter College, CUNY James Melo, musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and Senior Editor at RILM Abstracts of Music Literature The seminar will examine the troubled relationship between artistic creation and totalitarianism through the perspective of the lives and careers of two emblematic artists working in Stalinist Russia: the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Akhmatova’s status as an icon of Russia culture will be discussed through an analysis of her lyrical and elegiac cycle Requiem. Shostakovich’s career as a composer who worked under the auspices of the regime will be examined in parallel with the different paths taken by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, addressing the relationship between art and politics and the power of art to convey political ideology. Thursday, April 21, 2015 5:30-7:30 CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Room 9205, 9th floor FREE ADMISSION For more information: jmelo@gc.cuny.edu; 212-817-8606 Presented by the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, CUNY, and the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in connection with ERC’s theatrical concert The Heart is Not Made of Stone at BAM. To find out more about ERC’s theatrical concerts, visit our website: www.romanticcentury.org Julia Trubikhina received her PhD in Comparative Literature with a specialization in Slavic studies from New York University. Until Fall 2008 she taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University where she also coordinated the Russian Program. From 2009, Julia Trubikhina teaches in the Department of Classics and Oriental Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, where she is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Russian in the Division of Russian and Slavic Studies. Her book The Translator’s Doubts: Vladimir Nabokov and the Ambiguity of Translation (Academic Studies Press, 2015) has been awarded the Samuel Schuman Prize in Nabokov Studies in 2016. In addition to many scholarly articles and reviews in academic journals, Julia Trubikhina (as Julia Trubikhina-Kunina) also published translations and contributed original poetry to Russian, European, and American anthologies and literary journals. She is currently working on two translation projects: editing and translating a bilingual edition of poetry by Vladimir Aristov, an important contemporary poet, for Ugly Duckling Presse (forthcoming Spring 2016), and a volume of poetry and prose by a seminal contemporary woman poet and writer Elena Shvarts. James Melo has written extensively for scholarly journals and music magazines in Brazil, Uruguay, Austria, and the United States, and has been invited to participate as a panel discussant in conferences in Indiana, New York, and Canada. He has written program notes for several concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and for over 60 recordings on the Chesky, Naxos, Paulus, and Musikus labels, among others. He is the New York correspondent for the magazine Sinfonica in Uruguay, and senior editor at RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) at CUNY. Mr. Melo is the program annotator for the recording of Villa-Lobos’s complete piano music and Camargo Guarnieri’s complete piano concertos on Naxos. He has written program notes for all of ERC’s original productions and authored several scripts.
Miguel Roig-Francoli World Premiere, Apr 12 Spanish composer Miguel Roig-Francoli has an upcoming world premiere in NYC! Roig-Francoli was the recipient of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Composer’s Commission in 2010, for which he wrote Songs of the Infinite (premiered by Adam Kent and Jennifer Roig-Francoli at Carnegie Hall). Roig-Francoli has received many awards both for his composition and his teaching, and he has been described as a pioneer of postmodernism in Spanish music. His new work, Six Preludes after Chopin, will premiere at The Green Space on April 12, 2016, as a part of a solo recital by pianist Soyeon Kate Lee. Lee is a critically lauded pianist who has placed in several international piano competitions, including 1st place at the Juilliard Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in 2001. Lee is also a student at our very own Graduate Center, pursuing a DMA in piano performance with Richard Goode and Ursula Oppens. Tickets are only $20 and available through the Concert Artist’s Guild. 7:30 pm, Tuesday, April 12 The Green Space 44 Charlton St New York, NY 10013
Study Medieval Music This Summer in Besalú! Registration for the International Course on Medieval Music Performance at Besalú is still open! This year’s course will be July 8–23. Registration is per individual course, so please contact MMB directly to check availability for the specific program in which you’re interested. Medieval Music Besalú is of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s many early music partners. They offer a variety of intensive courses in medieval music performance, in the beautiful medieval town of Besalú, Spain (Catalonia). At the festival, students may take classes in all aspects of medieval music, from medieval Latin and Pythagorean tuning to reading music manuscripts, with of course, many opportunities for coaching in vocal and instrumental performance. Highlights of the upcoming course will include workshops in the Carmina Burana and liturgical drama. Classes are taught in English, and instruments are available for loan (subject to availability), so one does not need to travel to Europe with their own personal portative/citole/harp (etc) in order to participate. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity! (click image for full size)
Recent Benet Casablancas and Granados Celebration Press In addition to his recent appearances at CUNY’s Graduate Center, on the radio, and around NYC, composer Benet Casablancas has had many recent press mentions concerning his contribution to the Granados Celebration, the new work Romanza sin palabras: Homage to Granados. A brief summary: Upcoming Premieres of Benet Casablancas (Ritmo Online) Benet Casablancas Premieres Two Works in NY Benet Casablancas News, including a playlist of recommended works by Spanish composers (Music Sales Classical) Commemoration of the Composer Enrique Granados (Vice Versa Magazine) New York welcomes the world premiere of new work by Benet Casablancas in homage to Enrique Granados (Barcelona Clásica) and the below print articles, from Diari Sabadell and La Vanguardia (click images to enlarge)
New Granados Features with Pizà, Casablancas on Ràdio Catalunya The Ràdio Catalunya program Notes de Clàssica recently had a feature (click for full audio) on our ongoing Granados Celebration. The broadcast included interviews with the Foundation for Iberian Music’s director (and festival co-organizer) Antoni Pizà and committee member and renowned music journalist Mònica Pagès. Frequent Foundation collaborator Benet Casablancas, who most recently premiered a new work in homage to Granados, also appeared on Notes de Clàssica on March 9th to discuss his recent and upcoming work. (Full audio here.)
Electroacoustic Artists at the GC Instituto Cervantes has an ongoing installation by four sound artists, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, Ferrer-Molina, Richard Garet, and María Chávez, through Saturday, April 9th. The exhibit, entitled Sound vs Sense: Intersection, explores the many facets of the relationship between sound and language and engages questions of how we hear/listen and form meaning. Álvarez-Fernández and Ferrer-Molina were guests at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Composers Forum on March 22, to discuss their work, which inhabits the margins between experimental music and sound art. It explores conceptual art, performance, experimental video and other possibilities for developing our relationship with sound. They engage with these questions of intersections through concert pieces, sound installations, sculptures, curatorial projects and many other manifestations. The artists have given a series of related talks while in town, including a discussion at NYU’s Waverly Labs on Spanish electroacoustic artists and a live performance at Instituto Cervantes of material related to the installation. (Click here to download the pamphlet for the Composers Forum.) About the artists: Miguel Álvarez-Fernández is a sound artist, musicologist, and theorist. He is a professor of music at European University of Madrid (UEM) and hosts the weekly program dedicated to experimental music Ars Sonora, on Radio Clásica/Radio Nacional de España. Ferrer-Molina is a Spanish sound artist and musicologist and the author of the upcoming book Heterodoxy of the Guitar: Taxonomy of New Artistic Practices. Richard Garet is a NYC-based sound artist whose work has been featured at MoMA and many international museums. Maria Chávez is a Peruvian sound artist and turntablist. She is currently a research fellow for the Sound Practice Research department at Goldsmith’s University of London and regularly presents workshops in the UK, Spain, the US, and beyond.
Music in 21st-Century Society Receives Mention in NY Review In the April 7, 2016 issue of the New York Review of Books, musicologist Robert Winter writes on the performance legacy of Charles Rosen in a review of The Complete Columbia and Epic Album Collection (new on Sony Classical). We were pleased to see that Music in 21st-Century Society (curated by Antoni Pizà) receives passing mention, in a paragraph on the sparse record of Rosen’s public appearances. To our great honor, Charles Rosen was the inaugural guest of the Lloyd Old and Constance Old lecture series. This lecture, on April 18, 2012, was his final public appearance, before his passing in December of that year. Winter notes Rosen’s sharpness of mind, even to the end. Though his review concerns Rosen’s work and reception as a pianist, he writes, “A mind of insatiable curiosity produced one of the greatest writers about music from any era.” It was in this capacity that he was invited to speak with Music in 21st-Century Society, and we are grateful that we were able to contribute one small piece to the archive of his impressive career. Watch Rosen’s final lecture at Music in 21st-Century Society below:
José Menor Performs Granados, International Tour Acclaimed pianist José Menor will perform the works of Granados at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on March 24th, as a part of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Granados Celebration. Tickets are $25 (student and senior discounts available). This concert kicks off an international tour, so readers and Granados fans throughout the world will have many opportunities to hear Menor in the coming months. Dates include: May 7 – Beijing Arts Festival. This concert begins a tour of China and South Korea, through May 20th. June 8 – Festival Martha Argerich in Lugano, Switzerland November, 2016 – London, UK, performing Goyescas. (Date TBA; part of a Granados festival.) He also has a residency at Auditori Enric Granados in Lleida, Spain, Granados’s birthplace, and will be performing there regularly throughout 2016 and 2017. He began his residency in January of this year, with a performance of Goyescas. His next concert in Lleida will be May 29, with La Orquestra Simfònica Julià Carbonell. The program includes the first movement of the piano concerto, the suite Elisenda, and some Spanish dances. See the auditorium’s site for the full calendar.
Antoni Pizà on Catalunya Radio The Foundation For Iberian Music’s director, Antoni Pizà, is collaborating once again with “Who’s Afraid of the 20th Century?” (Qui té por del segle XX?) on Catalunya Radio, this time for a series on composer Romà Alís (1931–2006). He provided research consultation for the entire series, and episode 1 features an extended interview on Alís. At the time of writing, episodes 1 through 3 are available to stream online; the final episode will air this Sunday, February 28. Alís is a Catalan composer who spent much of his life composing in Seville. He began his career as a pianist and director of big bands and went on to composer a large and diverse catalog. He wrote many works for solo piano and chamber ensemble, in addition to orchestral and choral works, oratorios, ballets, and music for film and television. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Foundation’s composer commission. Tune in to the program to hear music and learn more about this under-appreciated Spanish composer! Qui té por del segle XX? features 20th century composers/compositions and airs Sunday nights, but its archives are available 24/7 online. Pizà last collaborated with the show for another month-long composer spotlight, on Carlos Suriñach.