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:
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!
US Premiere of Galician Bagpiper, Mercedes Peón On December 8, Mercedes Peón will perform at Elebash Recital Hall as a part of the Graduate Center’s Live@365 series. This is the US premiere of this award winning multi-instrumentalist. Peón is a master bagpiper, singer, and percussionist. She has collaborated with musicians such as Xosé Manuel Budino, Manu Chao and Carlos Núñez, and the Guardian has called her “one of the Spanish music scene’s true originals.” At her upcoming concert, “Ancient and Contemporary Songs of Galicia Spain,” she will perform both the traditional music of Galicia and her own original songs, based in this tradition. Tickets are $25, or FREE with a CUNY ID! CUNY students from any campus may email gcevents@gc.cuny.edu to reserve a ticket. Just present your ID at the door. Enjoy this preview of some of her original music, from a performance at the Musicport festival: Tickets: $25 7:00 pm, 7 December 2017 Elebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center 365 Fifth Ave, NYC, 10016
Conference: Transatlantic Rhythms in Music, Song, and Dance Natives, Africans, Roma, and Europeans: Transatlantic Rhythms in Music, Song, and Dance Indígenas, africanos, roma y europeos: Ritmos transatlánticos en música, canto y baile An international conference in Veracruz, Veracruz, México 11–13 Abril 2019 • Full Program • The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, partnering with the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music at the University of California Riverside, and the Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura in Veracruz will convene an international conference on the circulation of transatlantic rhythms. We encourage all scholars in the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, dance, theater, gender, race and ethnicity, diaspora, and immigration studies to submit proposals by spring of 2018. For more information about the conference theme, please see the Call for Papers. This our third conference in a series on transatlantic musical legacies, after 2017’s Transatlantic Malagueñas and Zapateados in Music, Song, and Dance at UC Riverside, and our inaugural conference at the Graduate Center in 2015, The Global Reach of the Fandango. (Selected papers are available from The Global Reach of the Fandango in English, from Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP), and in each paper’s original language, from Música oral del Sur. Selected papers from the UC Riverside zapateados conference are forthcoming in Spanish from Diagonal and in English from CSP.) View the program here. (Image: “El Fandangoe,” Samuel E. Chamberlain, 1847. In the collection of San Jacinto Museum of History.)
Gurumbé Screenings in NYC The date of our Gurumbé film screening and flamenco performance is rapidly approaching and tickets are selling fast. Get tickets here for this special event, December 3rd. Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories (Canciones de tu memoria negra) is a groundbreaking film that has been screening worldwide. It has been an official selection at more than ten US and international film festivals. Most recently, it screened at the Latin Cinema Festival in Minneapolis, and it is a part of the upcoming African Diaspora Film Festivals in Chicago and New York. Harvey Karten, the founder of New York Film Critics Online just reviewed the film, giving it four out of five stars. Our event at La Nacional is the first opportunity to meet and participate in a Q&A with the director, Miguel Ángel Rosales, dancer Yinka Esi Graves, and our host, K. Meira Goldberg, who will be moderating. In addition to our special screening event at La Nacional, there will be many additional opportunities to see Gurumbé in NYC. The film will run for one week at Cinema Village, December 1–7. It is also being screened at Columbia University on December 10th, in addition to numerous other university screenings in the northeast. Here is a full list of upcoming screenings: Howard University (Washington DC), Nov 27 Scribe Video Center (Philadelphia, PA), Nov 28 La Nacional (NY, NY), Dec 3 Smith College (Northampton, MA), Dec 5 Bryn Mawr College (Philadelphia, PA), Dec 6 The University of Chicago, Dec 8 Columbia University (NY, NY), Dec 10 Lastly, tickets are still available to see Yinka Esi Graves in a full dance program at Gibney Dance, November 30 – December 2. Watch Gurumbé‘s official Facebook page for up to date news and information on screenings, and of course, follow the Foundation on Facebook and on Twitter.
Civilizing the Monster: Romantic Longings in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” Friday, 8 December 2017, 5:30-7:30, at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Martin Segal Theatre, 1st floor. Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 novel began as a late-night parlor game with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, the poet Lord Byron, and Byron’s doctor John Polidori, centering on who could write the best horror tale. Since then, Shelley’s novel has been adapted to stage and film and has generated innumerable interpretations. The story of the scientist Victor Frankenstein and his ill-conceived effort to create a human-like monster has been read as a parable of science gone awry, a critique of Romanticism, a contribution to the tradition of “female gothic,” an autobiographical narrative of tormented creation (Mary’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to Mary), a Miltonic tale of “God-like” man, and as an allegory of overreaching industrial ambition. Mary Shelley’s mythic text will be discussed through its many interpretations and its distinct language and style, addressing its repercussion on several disciplines. Dreamlike and nightmarish scenarios, represented in works by Romantic composers from Schubert to Strauss, will be examined in connection with similar literary techniques in Frankenstein and in reference to the several attempts by the Creature to humanize and civilize himself. Prof. Nancy Yousef Professor of English at The Graduate Center and Baruch College, CUNY James Melo ERC Musicologist and Senior Editor at RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, CUNY Graduate Center FREE ADMISSION Presented by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in partnership with the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in connection with ERC theatrical concert, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For more information on ERC theatrical concerts, visit http:\\www.romanticcentury.org
New York Andalus Ensemble Winter Concert The New York Andalus Ensemble, in residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music, will be holding their winter concert with the full ensemble on December 13th. This year’s concert is in the intimate space of La Nacional. Tickets are $18, $15 student and senior, available through Event Brite. We recommend buying your tickets early! NYAE shows frequently sell out, at much larger venues. December 13, 7:30 pm La Nacional, 239 West 14th Street, NYC